After #OscarsSoWhite, Hispanics seek moment
LOS ANGELES — After black actors and films that focused on black characters were overlooked for Oscar nominations in 2015 and 2016, the #OscarsSoWhite social media outcry was so fierce that Hollywood was forced to listen. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began a determined diversification effort, and last year there were six black acting nominees, a record.
Whitewashing, or casting white actors as nonwhite characters, has galvanized Asian-Americans in Hollywood. Stars like Constance Wu have railed against the practice, hurting ticket sales for films like Ghost in the Shell, a Japanese manga adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson.
But as Hollywood tries to deal with those issues, not to mention the fallout from the harassment crisis that began with Harvey Weinstein’s downfall, the minority group that Hollywood excludes the most on screen — Latinos — is trying to create its own bullhorn moment.
“We are expecting that we are going to have to go to the Academy Awards this year and demonstrate,” said Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, a watchdog organization. “We’ve tried to push in less hostile ways. But these studios don’t seem to understand anything else.”
Latinos make up 18 percent of the population in the United States and 23 percent of frequent moviegoers — those who go to the movies at least once a month. But only about 3 percent of speaking characters in films during the last decade were Latino, according a study released in July by Stacy L. Smith, an associate professor at the University of Southern California. [Smith’s team found that 13.6 percent of speaking characters were black, while African-Americans make up 13.3 percent of the population. For Asians, the shares matched: 5.7 percent.]
The last Hispanic actor to win an Oscar was Penélope Cruz, from Spain, who was honored nine years ago for her supporting role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The last time the Academy Awards had Hispanic acting nominees was 2012, when Demián Bichir was given a nod for his portrayal of an undocumented Los Angeles gardener in A Better Life and the Argentina-born French actress Bérénice Bejo was nominated for playing a dancer in The Artist.
Only one Hispanic man has ever won the best actor Oscar — José Ferrer, for Cyrano de Bergerac in 1951 — and no Hispanic woman has ever been named best actress.