Are animated films the latest recipients of affirmative action? asks The Weekly Standard’s Beth Henary:
The animators who make green ogres and one-eyed bugs come to life on the big screen should be jumping up and down […] for the first time in the [Academy Awards’] 74-year history, the Academy will recognize the feature-length, animated film with its own Best Picture award. Pre-ceremony, the reviews of the new category — the first since 1981 (makeup) — are mixed, but the new award may help catapult animation past the stereotype that Shreks are for kids.
[…] Some critics of the new category take the position that animated movies have characters, scripts, and scores just like other movies and should therefore be treated no differently. Simon Wells, director of The Prince of Egypt, believes that animation is not a genre, but a technique. ‘I think it’s peculiar that a technique is singled out as a separate sort of movie,’ he told the Toronto Star.
Equally reserved about the new award was American Animation Institute president Steven Hulett, who told the Agence France-Presse that animation should be recognized, but ‘as the mainstream entertainment it always has been.’ According to Hulett, the award is a ‘double-edged sword’ that puts animation in the spotlight but that may ‘ghettoize’ animated films.
Related: For those of you who have not yet heard, the 2002 Oscars® for Best Actor and Best Actress went to two African-Americans. Unfortunately, their names escape me at the moment. As do the names of the films they appeared in. But did I mention they were both Black…?
“…Dude, you know who should have won? Denzel Washington and Halle Berry. They were frickin’ robbed, ‘f you ask me…”
Can you believe that this African-American wasn’t even <a href=”http://www.charlizetheron.com/”>nominated</a>?
Wow, that’s a hottie. You should forward that link to the Unablogger.
I don’t trust anyone with a “z” in her name.
I had a bad experience in a past life with a “Zelda.” And I freakin’ <i>hate</i> Princeton.
…Still have no idea why.
Jeff
I’m not sure if you are trying to be funny or what…? but the names are Denzel Washington ( Training Day) and Halle Berry ( Moster Ball).Both which were very good movies. I would hope that your humor may be coming into play with the fact the Denzel has basically been ignored by the Academy for years, and that they have finally had enough sense to recognize him for a job well done many years ago! Or maybe you are trying to emphasize the fact that they are both African American…. which to me is a shame that (in this day and age) this a first time an African American has received this honor! So…which one is it?????
Myra —
If you look at the very bottom of the post (”…Dude, you know who should have won? Denzel Washington and Halle Berry. They were frickin’ robbed, ‘f you ask me…”) and scroll a <a href=”http://www.creatical.com/weblog/archives/00000514.shtml”>few posts back</a>, you’ll see that indeed I knew the names of both winners; in this particular post I was trying to emphasize that too much has been made of both actors’ being African American—at the expense of their individuality. Denzel Washington and Halle Berry are <i>not</i> in any important way “representative” of all African Americans, nor should either be used as an emblem of the “Black American Actor.” Each is a talented performer who should be seen as such. So long as we keep making the story color , however (interestingly, Berry’s mom is white, as is Sidney Poitier’s wife—and so both, if they are symbols of <i>anything</i>, are perhaps more properly seen as symbols of the benefits of integration), we risk politicizing their talents in the service of needless racializing.
Hope this answers your questions?
JG
P.S. Your name sounds familiar to me…