http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/sep/21/viola-davis-speech-2015-emmys-video
Last night millions of American’s including
myself sat in their living room with their friends or family and watched the
Emmy’s. The Emmy’s have been a nation wide tradition in this country since 1955,
but not until last night had a woman of color won the best actress in a drama
series award (the most coveted award for a female TV actress). The 50 year old Juilliard graduate, Viola
Davis, was the first to break this barrier for her starring role in the hit abc
show, “How to Get Away With Murder”. Although Viola is the first woman of color
to win this award, she makes it very apparent she does not believe she was the
first one talented enough to do so. Viola used her acceptance speech to shed
light on a serious problem we often come back to in our class discussions;
systematic oppression.
Viola starts her speech by stating “The
only thing that separates women of color from anyone else, is opportunity. You
can not win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there”. Networks are often
scrutinized for their lack of diversity in programming by activist groups and
Niche media, but it has never been brought to the for front of society until last
night. Viola’s words last night relate closely with those in our reading from Benita
Roth, examining a racial divide in the women’s movement. It seems as though one
party was struggling so hard with an issue, that the other didn’t even
recognize. With a white woman winning the very first Emmy ever in 1949, even
before it the event was nationally broadcasted, it’s a wonder why it’s taken
this long for a woman of color to cross this milestone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETKNKbi3KhY
ReplyDeleteThis post brings up a good point and immediately made me refer back to a part of a Youtube video I had recently watched; this video is a round table discussion with a handful of famous, modern-day women comedians. A little after five or so minutes into the conversation, the comedians are asked to share the most sexist encounter they have ever experienced during their careers. It isn’t until around ten minutes in where race is mentioned, and then closer to thirteen minutes in is when the point is made that relates to this post’s discussion on different cultures in the media. In the discussion, Gina Rodriguez is congratulated on her Grammy award and praised for the speech she gave in acceptance of it. Her speech represented the change occurring in television for women of different cultures and how important it is for her Latino background to be receiving such a highly ranked role in television. To me personally, this brought to light the aspect of being able to turn on the standard American TV and watch a sitcom based on the life of any sort of ethnic background and not think twice about it. On a side note, this also brings me to think of how much of a fine line it is to being able to properly and respectfully represent a culture through a television show, while not conforming to just portraying stereotypical behavior.
In addition, I believe this post directly correlates to the readings for class tomorrow: “Ain’t I a Woman?” and “RACE AND GENDER”. Through comedians and actresses, such as Gina Rodriguez, obtaining such a powerful role in the media and pointing out the difference this will make in her public thank-you speech, she has brought light an important subject, just like Sojourner did when she took a stand. In a way, I feel this too can correlate to “RACE AND GENDER” because different cultures being given roles in such an immense spotlight is not entirely mainstream yet and in result has not been given the amount of public concern and attention it deserves; white women are on TV and have held some pretty major roles, so somewhat in affect, the topic of certain people not having as much opportunity to play such roles has been overlooked. Hopefully, however, society continues to move in the positive direction it is going and soon there will be no question as to who can fill what role.