When Viola Davis received an Academy Award nomination for her leading performance in "The Help" (2011), she achieved a feat that only one other black woman had before her. She received the second Oscar nomination of her career. The other woman to have done so is Whoopi Goldberg, who won an Oscar for her performance as Oda Mae Brown in "Ghost" (1990).
Overall, the narrative of black women and the Academy Awards is a disappointing one to say the least. Since Hattie McDaniel became the first black person to be nominated for or win an Academy Award in 1940, only 24 women have followed in her footsteps for a total of 26 nominations. In the Academy Awards' 84-year history, five black women have won for acting.
A look into further landmarks in the history of black actresses in this context is even more disappointing. The first year that two black actresses received nominations in the same category was 1967, when Carol Channing and Beah Richards received nominations for Best Supporting Actress. Channing is a surprising inclusion in this list; a woman of biracial descent, she hid her ethnic background until 2002. "The Color Purple" (1984) was the first film to garner nominations for multiple black actresses.
Now, we at Sassy Cinema love the Oscars, but let's face it -- Oscar can use some more sistas. This year's nominations put everything in perspective. Hattie McDaniel was the first woman to ever win an Oscar. What did she play? A maid. This year, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer joined the lucky few black women to be nominated. Oh, and they also played maids.
We don't want to chalk this all up to being the Academy Awards' fault -- Hollywood certainly doesn't do any favors for women of color, be they black, Latina, Asian, etc. But there's a problem when the black women being nominated for Academy Awards seem to play the same roles over and over again: maids, abused women, and singers (We're looking at you, Diana Ross, Queen Latifah, and Jennifer Hudson.)
The problem only gets deeper when you look beyond the roles these women play. Halle Berry's performance, the only by a black woman to have won for Best Actress, was notable for its use of frontal nudity. Therefore, in the story told by the Oscars, black women are still subjugated, used, and abused.
To keep things recent, let's discuss the two nominations for "The Help." We've seen the critiques of the film — it does "whitewash" black history and creates a definitive Caucasian superhero-like character with Emma Stone's role. Beyond that, though, Davis and Spencer (nominated for Best Supporting Actress) give performances that fall in line with Oscar's stereotypes of black women. Davis is the hurt woman. She has a dead son and works for and ungrateful employer who (spoiler alert!) kicks her to the curb at the film's close. Spencer, however, is a wholly different woman. She's sassy, something Oscar loves (see Goldberg in "Ghost" or Hudson in "Dreamgirls" (2006)). We do love sassy ladies, but did the filmmakers need to include the subplot of Spencer's character's abusive husband? Yet another stereotype to add to the film.
Overall, these women delivered great performances that were certainly better than the film they appeared in. That said, it's a shame that less stereotypical work by black actresses isn't also nominated this year. One great example — AdeperoOduye's rave-worthy performance as a lesbian teenager in "Pariah" (2011), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year. Repeatedly, performances by black actresses like Oduye go unnoticed despite breathtaking work. And while Meryl Streep deserves all the praise and nominations she can get, maybe our sistas should start to get some of that attention too, and not just for playing maids.
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Jacob Passy is a junior majoring in international relations. He can be reached at Jacob.Passy@tufts.edu. Alex Kaufman is a sophomore majoring in sociology. He can be reached at Alexander.Kaufman@tufts.edu.
