This year's British Academy Film Awards was finalized on February 19 local time, but the discussion around the award results has not died down, and outside voices are mainly criticizing the award's neglect of minorities.
In fact, as soon as the awards of the 76th British Academy Film Awards were awarded, some media questioned them. The main reason is that "The Transient Universe", which tells an Asian story, received ten nominations and only won the Best Editing Award in the end; Angela Bassett, who showed outstanding acting skills in Black Panther 2, also missed the best supporting actress award.
Group photo
As the saying goes, a thousand words are not worth a single picture. In the middle of the night of February 19, the Academy posted a group photo of all the winners on its official social media account as usual. In the whole photo, dozens of award winners are all smiling and standing still, but all of them are white. After careful identification, only one black figure can be found, and it is not the winner, but the master of ceremonies of the awards ceremony, Alison Hammond (Alison Hammond). By Monday, the photo sparked an upsurge of discussion on the Internet.
"It claims to have taken two steps forward, but in fact it has taken ten steps back." A brief comment by British black female journalist Ada Enechi (Ada Enechi) on social media has been retweeted a lot, and it has also attracted the attention of the Sri Lankan-born BBC. Empathy from showrunner Ashanti Omkar: "I've been used to this kind of white supremacy in the British film industry for a long time, but in 2023, there are still awards like this, which really blows my mind." It felt too inappropriate, too perverse."
Like Ashanti Omka, who is a member of the British Academy of Film and also participated in this year's voting, video game creative expert Del Walker (Del Walker) wrote on his personal social media: "Member of the British Academy of Film Today, I am no longer proud of the title. Even if Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, Viola Davis or Kwan Jiwei can stand out at the Golden Globes, they will still stop at the Baftas. I believe that any selection mechanism must have a certain degree of prejudice, but this is too much, and there is a problem at the root."
Critics represented by Walker said that their appeal is not to force the British Academy of Film Awards to give awards to African-Americans and Asians, nor to distribute awards according to a certain fixed ratio to achieve the so-called ethnic balance or diversity goals. It’s just that the results this time are really surprising. There are obviously works and filmmakers from different cultural backgrounds shortlisted, but the results show that the judges of the Academy Awards only prefer stories belonging to white Europeans and white Americans. "It's like inviting a group of fishermen who only love seafood to be the judges of a food competition," he added.
Soon, the keyword "BAFT Taibai" became a popular hashtag on social media, and all kinds of angry or ridiculed or criticized or ridiculed posts received a lot of likes and reposts. "Look at these people of color, the BAFTAs have already nominated you, and you have been invited to perform live, and let you be the award recipients. For them, it is already a goal of diversity. .” A netizen criticized in a mocking tone.
In fact, it is not the first time that the British Academy of Film Awards has encountered such criticism. Back in 2020, it was criticized for its severe lack of diversity. At the Academy Awards that year, the 19 actors who were nominated for actor awards were all white actors, so that when Joaquin Phoenix came to the stage to receive the best actor, he criticized the Academy Award judges on the spot It is too narrow. "Today we are sending a public message to people of color all over the world: You are not welcome here."
Since then, the British Film Academy has also conducted a heart-wrenching review, and made what is known as as many as 120 rectifications, including the proposal to add 1,000 non-white judges by 2025 and other measures. As a result, judging from this year's nomination list alone, taking actors as an example, eight of the twenty nominees are not pure white, which is not a small improvement. However, the final results were still disappointing to the outside world.
