Oscars 2016: Steve McQueen on #OscarsSoWhite: 'It's exactly like MTV was in the 1980s'
McQueen is the only black director to win Best Picture, for 12 Years a Slave in 2014.
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Your support makes all the difference.Steve McQueen, director of Hunger, Shame, and 12 Years a Slave, has now added his own voice to the controversy surrounding the Oscars' startling lack of diversity.
Speaking to The Guardian, McQueen reflected on the 88th Academy Awards' failure to nominate a single non-white actor for a second year running, though performances from both Creed and Straight Outta Compton were critically acclaimed, leading to the resurgence of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.
"This is exactly like MTV was in the 1980s," he commented. "Could you imagine now if MTV only showed music videos by a majority of white people, then after 11 o’clock it showed a majority of black people? Could you imagine that happening now? It’s the same situation happening in the movies. Hopefully, when people look back at this in 20 years, it’ll be like seeing that David Bowie clip in 1983."
McQueen was referring to a moment, resurfaced in light of Bowie's passing, in which the artist questions the music channel's lack of representation of black artists. "I don’t even want to wait 20 years," he continued. "Forgive me; I’m hoping in 12 months or so we can look back and say this was a watershed moment, and thank God we put that right."
Though McQueen acknowledges the Academy's recent attempt to promote diversity within its voting body; he, like many others in the industry, attributes the real issues at hand as existing outside of the awards race.
"One could talk about percentages of certain people who are Academy members and the demographics and so forth, but the real issue is movies being made," he explains. "Decisions being made by heads of studios, TV companies and cable companies about what is and is not being made. That is the start. That is the root of the problem."
The director's 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture in 2014, making him the only black director ever to be honoured with the award. During production, the director's belief in crucial representation came to be supported both in front and behind the camera. "I expressly said in a meeting, ‘Look, I can’t make this movie in a situation where I don’t see any black faces other than my own behind the camera. We need to employ certain people.’ I made that very clear and it was attended to."
McQueen is currently prepping three projects: a cinematic adaptation of Lynda La Plante's 80s TV series Widows, in which the wives of a gang of deceased robbers decide to finish off the job; a BBC series following an African-Caribbean family between Enoch Powell's 1968 'rivers of blood' speech to 2005's 7/7 bombings; and HBO's Codes of Conduct, which follows a young African-American from Queens attempting to navigate the Manhattan elite.
The 88th Academy Awards will take place 28 February.
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