Last Sunday, the 89th Academy Awards were held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, and boy, that ending sure was a thrill ride of emotions. I’m sure that most of the country already knows the story, but for those who may have missed the craziness that went down that night, I share reiterate what happened.
Essentially, when the award for ‘Best Picture’ was announced onstage, someone had accidentally given the presenters, “Bonnie and Clyde” co-stars, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, a duplicate envelope for the winner for ‘Best Actress’, in this case being Emma Stone for “La La Land”. The confusion is palpable on Beatty’s face as he looks at the misplaced card. Dunaway hastily snatched the card from Beatty’s hands and announced the other name besides Emma Stone on the card as the winner for ‘Best Picture’: “La La Land”.
In reality, the winner for ‘Best Picture’ was Moonlight, the sprawling epic about a young black man attempting to find out who he is, and after the mistake was cleared up, the producers of “La La Land” graciously handed their awards over to Barry Jenkins, the director of Moonlight, and his crew.
I personally was rooting for “La La Land”, the musical romance of two aspiring artists set on the backdrop of a sun-bleached Los Angeles, to win. Upon a viewing of “Moonlight”, however, I see now that it deserved its win. Any other year, “La La Land” would’ve easily swept the awards season, but after a year with hate, bigotry, and political turmoil abound in the United States, I can see now how important the story of a young African-American boy coming to terms with his race and sexual identity really is for today’s culture.
But this article isn’t about that, it’s about what I saw on Twitter the day after.
It had previously been made apparent to me that many people were claiming that “La La Land” had a “race problem”: this being that Ryan Gosling’s character, a jazz pianist, was portrayed as a “white savior of jazz”, and that John Legend’s character, a successful lead guitarist in the fusion jazz band, The Messengers, as a sell-out.
Numerous people on Twitter the night after the Oscars were expressing their joy not on the fact that “Moonlight”, the first film with an all-black cast and an LGBTQ main character, had won ‘Best Picture’, which is a historic victory for all, but instead that “La La Land”, a film that symbolized “the white-washing of jazz”, had lost.
This is all frankly incomprehensible to me. In the actual movie, Ryan Gosling’s character was never a “white savior of jazz.” The character of Sebastian’s motivation throughout the film is that he wants to open his own jazz club because the musical style completely enamors him. He’s not out to save it from the likes of John Legend’s character, Keith. Sebastian simply loves traditional jazz, and wants to do his best to keep it around.
On the character of Keith, I am confused to why people think of him as a sell-out. No one ever comes out directly and calls him a sell-out, and I never felt it was implied throughout the 127-minute feature. Instead, he is just adapting to the changing culture and embracing new opportunities in the world. Keith is a pioneer in what jazz can be, while Sebastian is content with what it was. I believe that if writer-director Damien Chazelle intentionally wanted to portray Keith as a sell-out, he would make the song that The Messengers perform later in the film completely unbearable, just to get his point across. However, the song performed is instead very good, and catchy, with its jazz elements fused with newer, more contemporary styles of music.
The entire argument about race in “La La Land” completely bewilders me. Imagine for a second that myself, being white, were to open an underground hip-hop club, to preserve “old school rap” because I was not a fan of newer styles of rap. Am I suddenly a “white savior of hip-hop”? No. I’m just a person who enjoys a style of music, to the point where I want to support its roots.
I firmly believe that any person can play any role that they want to. Race, sexual orientation, and, with some exclusions, gender should play no role in who portrays a character. Films that are about race should be the only ones generating discussion about race, not one where an actor of one ethnicity can effortlessly be replaced by an actor of another.
Think about it. Would so much controversy be directed at the film if it had starred an all-black cast? What about an all-white cast? If either of those had been the case, then there wouldn’t be any controversy at all…well, except maybe for the all-white one.
“Moonlight” and “La La Land” are two of 2016's most memorable films. And in the end, both got the American public talking about race, albeit one of them didn’t expect to. To be frank, “La La Land” only has a race problem if you decide to make it a problem. If you do, just remember, you’d just be adding one more issue to the millions that already exist in the world, and one that’s not even remotely justified.
