IT FINALLY HAPPENED. Leonardo DiCaprio has won his very first Academy Award. Whether you were rooting for or against ‘The Revenant’, whether you think he deserved the award for his grunting and groaning as Hugh Glass or just wanted him to win a damn Oscar already, it doesn’t matter. He’s officially in the Oscar club now.
At issue in the news (and on the Morning Show) recently has been the disproportionate number of Academy Award nominees of white ethnicity in comparison to those of any and all other races combined, i.e. #OscarsSoWhite. While some have questioned whether any non-white actors even deserved nominations this year, others have said non-white actors "need to stop whining" and focus on more important things. Uhh, about that:
For the second year in a row not a single Academy Award nominee in any of the acting categories are black. This has caused a lot of commentary and talk of boycotts. Some of it comes from the people you'd suspect like Al Sharpton and Michael Moore. Plenty of minority celebrities seem to be honestly concerned about what seems to them like a white-out.
One of the few unquestioned highlights of this year’s Academy Awards was the live performance of Best Original Song nominee “Everything is Awesome” from The LEGO Movie. Tegan and Sara and the Lonely Island performed, Oprah got her very own LEGO Oscar, and Will Arnett moaned about darkness and no parents while wearing Val Kilmer’s Batsuit from Batman Forever. It was a great moment, but one that was totally out of touch with the spirit of the evening. According to almost every pundit and critic, everything was decidedly not awesome about the 87th Oscars.