The Biggest Upset In Oscar History with Moonlight, The Worst Snub with The Color Purple, + the Role of Race, Sexuality, Gender, & Time with the Academy Awards
As a white feminist who is trying every day not to be a White Feminist™, I want to do everything I can to be an ally to WOC without ever speaking over them.
So if I mistakenly reblog something that is not for me, please tell me (anon or not – whatever makes you comfortable), and I will take it down immediately.
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Honestly more white women need to have this idea cause most of em will post something about woc (especially black women) and they’ll get mad when you, a woc, is offended by it. Like what?
Please, if I post something offensive, tell me, and if possible, tell me why it’s problematic so I can avoid doing it again.
I want to not be racist. I try my best to not be racist. But that said, I have grown up white in a white dominated, colonial nation where white supremacy is in every schoolbook, every tv show and every ‘traditional’ song. I know that I will screw up sometimes, but know that I’d rather know where I screwed up so that I can change.
My white supremacist, islamophobic, conspiracy theorist uncle is here right now and I’m dealing as best I can by chewing the heck out of my Droplet from stimtastic (to save my poor hands) and reading adorable Steve/Bucky gay porn. I figure that combined with being unrepentantly queer and autistic is as close as I can get to punching fascism in the face today seeing as how he’s not my guest and it’s not my house.
I got dressed in my traditional Indian regalia, but there was a man, he was the producer of the whole show. He took that speech away from me and he warned me very sternly. “I’ll give you 60 seconds or less. And if you go over that 60 seconds, I’ll have you arrested. I’ll have you put in handcuffs.”
– Sacheen Littlefeather in Reel Injun(2009), dir. Neil Diamond.
They were MAD, CONFUSED AND PRESSED that Marlon Brando would betray White Supremacy in this way.
To this very day, they are TWISTED over this.
And when Littlefeather got up there and READ THEM FOR FILTH, they GAGGED. For eons.
So I imagine there are people like me out there who’ve never even heard of Marlon Brando and are extremely confused over why this is important.
Marlon Brando was the Don in The Godfather, and in 1973, he was nominated for and won an Academy Award for it. However, he was also a huge Natives rights activist, and boycotted the ceremony because he felt that Hollywood’s depictions of Native Americans in the media led to the Wounded Knee Incident (which I was always taught as “the second massacre at Wounded Knee” but apparently that’s not the real name). He sent Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache Native rights activist, in his stead. Wikipedia’s article on her explains the rest:
Brando had written a 15-page speech for Littlefeather to give at the ceremony, but when the producer met her backstage he threatened to physically remove her or have her arrested if she spoke on stage for more than 60 seconds.[5] Her on-stage comments were therefore improvised. She then went backstage and read the entire speech to the press. In his autobiography My Word is My Bond, Roger Moore (who presented the award) claims he took the Oscar home with him and kept it in his possession until it was collected by an armed guard sent by the Academy.
That is what this gifset is about.
You have GOT to read up on this. The Wounded Knee Incident, Marlon Brando and Sacheen Littlefeather, Anna Mae Aquash. ALL OF IT.
“Seriously, can old white dudes please stop saying shitty things about Islam? Because every time they do I’m scared all Muslims will think we’re like that which is pretty much how all Muslims feel when a terrorist kills people in the name of Allah. And for those accusing me of defending Islam, and a lot have said that this week, I’m defending common sense. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world right now. 1.6 billion. As someone pointed out on twitter this week, if Islam really bred terror, we’d all be dead right now. The combined forces of Islamic State, Boko Haram and Al Qaeda makes up 0.003% of the global Muslim population. Less than 2% of all terror attacks are carried out in the name of Islam. You’ve got more of a chance of being killed by a bee sting, a peanut or the NHS. And I’m sure most Australians are lovely, but until we recognize the festering puss sore that is Rupert Murdoch maybe we need to be held accountable as well ‘cause having said all that, I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we should be congratulating Rupert Murdoch. Because in a sorely divided world, what we need right now is unity and whether you’re a Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or a Jew, I think we can all agree that Rupert Murdoch is a massive fuck knuckle.”
Agent Carter needs to be a success. It needs to be a success because sexism is still very much a thing, in Hollywood as in most other large societal institutions. There is an ironic meta-level to this series and to Peggy Carter as a character, wherein she must battle the sexism of her time in order to do the work she feels called to and which is exclusively male-dominated. Concurrently, her series must fight that same uphill battle of entrenched sexism 70 years in the future, in present-day 2015, as it attempts to make a dent in an entertainment genre still depressingly, excessively inhabited almost solely by white men.
Male superhero yarns can be brilliant, and they can be mediocre and they can be downright abominable, and Hollywood will continue to churn them out prolifically like clockwork. If Agent Carter is nor a roaring success, all hopes for a Black Widow movie go rushing down the drain, along with any other female-led superhero movie or TV franchise still in early stages of development. Agent Carter is a test balloon, and all of Hollywood is using this one 8-episode series to pose the question “Can female superheroes be successful? Can they be profitable? Can they be popular?”
On the Meta-Sexism of Agent Carter & Breaking the Superhero Glass Ceiling (X) via thedailyfandomtv
The NT Intervention is a policy that sees 94% of people income managed to be Indigenous. Despite these discrepancies 75% of people who are moved off the income management scheme are non-indigenous. In 2011/12 the income management scheme cost $76 million to implement and resulted in over $88 million being spent on bureaucrats just to control Aboriginal welfare. This is a government that spends $80 million on the surveillance of Indigenous people. It is a system where Aboriginals make up 3% of the population but yet a third of the children taken away from their homes are Aboriginals. Racist policies towards out First Nations people did not end with the Stolen Generation and is alive and well today. (X)(X)
Isn’t it interesting that the three main new villains of the Axis arc appear to be Luke Cage, Sam Wilson, and Wanda Maximoff?
Gosh, what a strange coincidence, two African-American men and a Jewish-Romani immigrant woman. And isn’t it odd how the main heroes fighting against them are predominantly white men like Steve Rogers, Peter Parker, whoever the fuck is Nova now, and Wade Wilson?
How terribly interesting.
And by interesting, I still mean super racist!
[Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #1, 2014.]
One thing I was thinking about today was Alexander Pierce. I feel like one thing that’s been under-discussed in Cap 2 meta (at least, from what I’ve seen on my dash— maybe it’s been talked about elsewhere!) is the privilege of Alexander Pierce, a privilege that is very deliberately communicated onscreen.
Pierce, as a character, is visually distinctive: he’s not just an older white man, but a very specific genre of older white man. His three-piece suits and tortoiseshell glasses suggest a fondness for the styles, at least, of some happier past: the gentlemen’s era (to me located sort of vaguely pre-Philby) when men like him knew how to be graceful with power, because it was something that came naturally to them, something they would never have to demand. His charm, his generally pleasant demeanor are of a piece with this— after all, as he himself tells Steve, he’s the diplomat: the one who keeps his hands clean while Nick Fury does what needs to be done.
knitting in the dark 