As the countdown to the 96th Academy Awards comes to a close, little suspense hangs over who will win the supporting actress Oscar. And that outcome is almost certainly both good news and bad news.
First, the good news: Barring one big surprise, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, nominated for her moving performance in “The Holdovers” as Mary Lamb, the head chef at an elite New England boarding school, is headed to the winner's circle , continuing a streak that has so far included a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Indie Spirit Award.
Now for the bad news: A Randolph victory would continue the motion picture academy's decades-long tradition of honoring black women who play characters subservient to white people or in roles that operate in support of white characters, while honoring them for little else.
To be clear, the problem here is not with the insightful and agile Randolph, for whom a victory would be the well-deserved culmination of a series of impressive screen performances in productions as wide-ranging as “Dolemite Is My Name,” “High Fidelity” and “Only murders in the building.”
But in the line from Hattie McDaniel, the first black winner in this category, to Randolph, probably the newest, it's hard not to read a worrying trend among Oscar voters: When it comes to determining which work deserves recognition, the academia still puts black women in a box.
To date, only 10 black actresses have won an Oscar, and Halle Berry remains the only one to win in the top category, for her role in 2001's “Monster's Ball.” (The numbers for black women are even more dire in the categories that do not act).
And it was through McDaniel, who made history in 1940 as the first black actress to win an Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy, the domestic slave in “Gone with the Wind,” that the academy established its pattern: awarding women. almost exclusively black. in supporting roles, many of them literally or figuratively serving the white characters around them.
That list includes Whoopi Goldberg as psychic con artist Oda Mae Brown in 1990's “Ghost,” in which Brown exists solely to communicate with the ghost of a murdered banker (Patrick Swayze) determined to punish his killer and protect the love of her life (Demi). Moore); Octavia Spencer as maid Minny Jackson in 2011's “The Help,” a housekeeper who also tends to the emotional needs of a privileged plantation wife (Jessica Chastain) in civil rights-era Mississippi; and Lupita Nyong'o as Patsey in 2013's “12 Years a Slave,” an enslaved woman who suffers rape, brutal whippings and other abuse at the hands of a sadistic couple (Michael Fassbender and Sarah Paulson) in antebellum Louisiana.
The list of black actresses with menial roles who were nominated in the category but did not win is even longer.
Ethel Waters became the second black actress to earn an Oscar nomination in 1949 as an illiterate Southern washerwoman in “Pinky.” Juanita Moore played a maid serving actress Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) in “Imitation of Life” in 1959. Alfre Woodard played a maid for columnist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Mary Steenbergen) in “Cross Creek” in 1983.
There have been exceptions, of course, like Jennifer Hudson, who won for playing castoff singer Effie White in 2006's “Dreamgirls,” or Viola Davis, who won for her portrayal of the matriarch of a black family in mid-1900s Pittsburgh. century, in the United States. 2016 adaptation of “Fences” by August Wilson.
And fortunately, the rate at which black women are nominated and win Oscars, whatever the role, is increasing. (This year, nominated alongside Randolph in the supporting actress category is Danielle Brooks for “The Color Purple”).
But the limitations placed on black actresses throughout the history of the Academy Awards are particularly highlighted when compared to the variety of roles played by black men who have won acting Oscars. Of the five who won a statuette as a leading man, and especially of the six who won it for their supporting role, a much greater proportion won it for playing characters in positions of authority (Louis Gossett Jr., “An Officer and a Gentleman ), celebrity (Cuba Gooding Jr., “Jerry Maguire”) or political influence in his or her own right (Daniel Kaluuya, “Judas and the Black Messiah”).
One could even say that the expressive and soulful Randolph has received such well-deserved praise for her performance because her strength in the role outweighs the more deferential aspects of Mary's character.
His work on “The Holdovers” has been a key element in the film's popular and critical success. In addition to Randolph, the film is nominated for best picture, lead actor (Paul Giamatti), original screenplay (Alexander Payne) and director (Payne).
Set in 1970, the film centers on Paul Hunham (Giamatti), a short-tempered classics professor recruited to remain on campus and supervise the handful of students who are unable to return home during the Christmas winter break. When the rich father of one of the students schemes to take most of the children on vacation, Hunham ends up trapped with Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a moody only child who has been abandoned at school by his parents. . The open mutual contempt between teacher and student ends up turning into an affectionate bond.
Also staying on campus to manage the school cafeteria is Mary, who is so heartbroken by the death of her son Curtis in the Vietnam War, a former standout at the predominantly white high school, that she declines an invitation from family members. who live nearby to join them during their vacation. Mary reveals that she took the job in the first place so that her son could receive a first-class education, but she couldn't afford to send him to college, causing him to be recruited. The campus was “the last place my baby and I were together,” she tells Hunham, explaining her decision to self-isolate there: “I feel like it's too soon. Like Curtis feels like I'm abandoning him.”
Randolph vividly describes Mary's anguish. She wants to have little to do with others. He smokes a lot and usually has a bottle of liquor within reach of her. Even attending a Christmas Eve party is more painful than joyful.
But despite Payne's claim, in explaining his decision to cast Randolph for The Times, that “if he's stealing every movie he appears in, then it's time for him to be a leading man,” Mary might best be described as a third wheel in the story, serving primarily as a bridge between Hunham and Tully as she prepares food for them and reluctantly allows them to join her in the evenings while she watches “The Newlywed Game.”
This is as much a function of the context around Mary, or lack thereof, as it is of the character herself. Where Hunham's bitter dispute with the school administration and Tully's troubled home life are explored in some detail, we ourselves are left to fill in the blanks when it comes to the racial dynamics of a black mother and her late son in a white institution. or by the atmosphere in Boston on the eve of its fiercest battles over school desegregation.
Instead, Mary becomes the personification of pain, and her pain is only broken by her disdain for their work: she refers to the students as “real little sons” and declares her frustration at having to prepare meals for “300 little royal sons.” ”.
The only other black figure at the school, a janitor named Danny, is introduced as a potential love interest for Mary, only to be dispatched halfway through the film. Later, when Hunham and Tully plan a getaway to Boston, Mary asks if they can drop her off in nearby Roxbury; After all, she has decided, without explanation, to visit her family, especially her little sister, who is pregnant. But Payne passes up another opportunity to develop Mary's character. Instead, the film cuts to scenes showing Hunham and Tully visiting a museum, ice skating, and watching a movie.
Some may view such criticism of “The Holdovers” as nitpicking or an attempt to ruin Randolph's parade. But if the film academy wants to achieve its vision, advanced since the #OscarsSoWhite uproar nearly a decade ago, of making the industry's top honor more inclusive, it can't just increase the number of nominees and winners of color. It also needs to recognize a broader, more empowered range of work by black women: films like “The Woman King” and “Till,” two of the awards' most controversial recent snubs. Otherwise, the future of the Oscars may continue to look too much like the Oscars' past.
