The recent Oscars issue is not about racism

Pro made quite a few great arguments that I must say are quite reputable. But, I'll be including the multiple variables my opponent didn't account for. I'll be going into the discrimination of minority based films in production and films and actors that were eligible but weren't nominated. 1. Discrimination of Minorities in Hollywood We'll begin dissecting the film industry from the top down, starting with the decision makers of the top six companies in Hollywood. Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Comcast, Sony, 21st Century Fox, and Viacom. Out of all of those companies, only one has an executive position held by a minority[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Now, just that all executive positions that hold any creative value in these "Big 6" are held by whites doesn"t mean that Hollywood is racist. That itself would be racist! But adding the factor of China to this lack of black leadership can paint a darker picture (pun intended). China has become the second largest film market in the world behind USA and is projected to become even more prominent in the production of film. Hollywood has already begun accommodating towards this new market by changing the storylines, settings, and characters of multiple movies. World War Z"s original script stated China as the origin for the virus outbreak. This was censored as to not make the impression that China is an unclean country. The antagonists of the Red Dawn remake were originally going to be Chinese, but were changed to North Korean so that China wouldn"t seem like a threat to the American people[7] You may ask how this relates to racism in the film industry, and to you I present the Chinese version of the newest Star Wars poster[8]. A blatant attempt to minimize a main character who happens to be black. Unfortunately, China doesn"t want to see films with black characters in them, and since China has it"s censorship-claws in the backs of Hollywood it"s obvious that no film with a predominantly black cast will get an international release. If a film doesn"t get an international release, then that means a confirmed drop in box office profit, and a drop in box office profit means a much smaller budget. Thus, with a smaller budget you get lower caliber actors, directors, producers, and special effects. Logically, this will conclude in overall lackluster films and thus less Oscar nominations for films with prominent black characters. 2. Eligible Films without Nominations When Pro stated "Simply because Straight Outta Compton was not nominated does not mean that 7,000 voters are racist, but they simply voted for something they felt was better." he is ignoring the three other films that featured prominent black characters. Chi-Raq, a drama/musical rated by The Guardian as a 5/5 and an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes, Beasts of No Nation, a war drama rated by Rotten Tomatoes with a 91%, and Creed, a drama/sport film rated a 94% by Rotten Tomatoes and an 82% on Metacritic. [9, 10, 11] To say that Straight Outta Compton is the only excellent film with a black cast that wasn"t nominated this year is an absolute understatement. So that"s three films that were received very well critically, yet were not nominated. May I also mention that there can be ten nominations each year [12] and only eight films were nominated for Best Picture. So how is it that there were these three films with black actors that were critically acclaimed yet two nominations weren"t used? Wouldn"t it make sense to at least nominate two of those films? You may say that this is because these films weren"t as popular as others, but wouldn"t that be because of a lack of budget? Out of those three, Creed is the only film that had any significant advertisements and that"s purely because it"s the sequel to the ever-popular Rocky series. 3. Conclusion It seems to me that the most logical reason for the lack of Oscar nominations this year is because of race. Otherwise, I don"t understand why the Oscars wouldn"t nominate Chi-Raq, Beasts of No Nation, or Creed to fill their maximum of ten nominations. I would also state that because of the growth of China"s worldwide box office share that black actors and films have and will become less popular internationally as time goes on. [1] http://www.warnerbros.com... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://corporate.comcast.com... [4] http://www.sonypictures.com... [5] http://www.21cf.com... [6] http://thepub.viacom.com... [7] http://origin.www.uscc.gov... [8] http://variety.com... [9] https://www.google.com... [10] https://www.google.com... [11] https://www.google.com... [12] http://www.oscars.org...