Oscars 2016: It's time for Hollywood to stop defining great drama as white men battling adversity [View all]

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Oscars 2016: It's time for Hollywood to stop defining great drama as white men battling adversity

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-et-st-oscars-mcnamara-notebook-white-hollywood-20160115-column.html

To be clear, these are all good stories, powerful, well told and beautifully acted. But in world filled with billions of people who are not white men, they are certainly not the only good stories, not by a long shot.

Though our demographics and attitudes continue to change, Hollywood's definition of great drama has remained stubbornly attached to standards and expectations set back when men were men (if they were white) and everyone else needed to just shut up and listen.

Obviously, plenty of films have challenged this sensibility, telling a wide variety of stories from many points of view. But when it comes to Oscar bait, the default remains too often set at literal reading of the four essential categories of conflict: Man versus man, man versus nature, man versus society and man versus himself. As many have already pointed out, the characters in the lead actor category were a writer, scientist/astronaut, tracker, inventor and artist. The characters in lead actress? Homemaker, mother/rape survivor, inventor, wife, clerk.

Certainly "Straight Outta Compton," "Creed," "Concussion" and "Beasts of No Nation" fit the "classic" definition of literary conflict. They just didn't fit, apparently, academy voters' ideas of a classic best picture.