OSCARS, WOMEN AND OUR OWN RED CARPET

Writing this the morning after. Hungover from Oscar disgust and fatigue: where once again, women, people of color and the poor are relegated to the gallery of the absurd. And the final twist: our own Michelle Obama, flanked by staff in military, presenting Best Picture to Argo. Now, just because I'm dating a Persian guy and have a kind of inside track to how the Persian community is feeling about this, I still want to quote something I read this morning on my FB:

"I would like to think, in the ideal world of ART, politics would have no meddling power!

Is Argo really that great of a movie, to be picked as the best picture?!!! 
Or is it just another way of portraying the unknown Eastern world for Westerners, the way it has been done for decades?!!!  And wow, what a coincidence that the first lady should announce this victory--flanked by young men and women in military dress?"

In the First Lady's plea for more funding for the arts for kids, I couldn't help thinking about the countless, nameless artists killed, tortured or incarcerated for their work against regimes we supported or looked the other way: Think: Chilean musician Victor Jara,  Bassel Al Shahade, a Syracuse Film student recently killed in Syria, and my own dear friend, the poet/author Philo Ikonya, the Kenya PEN-Chapter President, self-exiled to Norway after being beaten and tortured in a Kenyan prison last year for speaking out about political corruption and women's rights. 

I don't want to lob the tiresome complaint about the number of women nominated this year ( the roster of 2013 nominees includes 140 men and just 35 women), but what's the point of counting anymore? It's a tiresome refrain. I like to look at the power behind the powerless...I guess its no surprise to anyone that the Academy voters are overwhelmingly white and male...77% according to a 2012 LA Times report and 90% in some categories like special efx and cinematography. Of the academy's 43-member board of governors, six are women; public relations executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs is the sole person of color.

So maybe its time to look at ANOTHER red carpet:

The one we are rolling out at GlobalGirl Media. I am so proud of our very own Wendy Garcia, who less than 24 hours prior to the Oscars, took home her own award as part of the national Connecther video contest, celebrating "stories about girls worth telling." Here she is with her certificate and well-deserved grin. 

Yes, we need more government money for the arts, but we also need a stronger commitment to gender and racial equity in the arts. If its only white men choosing who wins and the winners next projects get green-lit...and we have an entire Gay Men's Chorus singing songs like "We Saw your Boobs," as part of the opening ceremony of one of the most watched television events globally, (how many of those actresses were portraying rape victims?)...how is this funny? The way Seth MacFarlane presented it, teeing it up as a tasteless joke, the whole point was to laugh, NOT find it tasteless, masogynistic or just crudely cruel. 

I think Amy Davidson said it best, in her New Yorker blog: Beyond cameos and torture, the ceremony engaged in a political fight involving women, and took the dumber side. Movies, and what women do in and to them, are better than the Academy seemed to realize. The same could be said about a lot of women in a lot of jobs. And women can’t forget it.