THE members of Bafta, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, are under the cosh for not nominating any black actors and actresses this week for their annual awards, and failing to nominate a single woman director. Here are the BBC and various Leftists getting into a strop over it.
The film industry has for many years attempted to find its place in modern politics, whether it belongs there or not, and over the last decade we’ve seen actors, actresses, writers, directors, film critics and many media sycophants (the BBC at the top of that list) pandering to whatever social media trend is in fashion. #MeToo was the trend a year or two ago; now, it’s climate change and what the luvvies call ‘diversity’. A few years ago, there was Blackgate at the Oscars which prompted such an overwhelming response from the associated media brown-nosers that in following years multiple black actors, actresses and directors were nominated for Academy Awards, some becoming virtue-signalling winners.
Now, it appears, the Baftas have taken a backwards step and have returned to giving awards on the basis of merit rather than sex or colour. How terrible! Well, I say merit, but one actress, Margot Robbie, has been nominated for a film in which she hardly speaks (Once Upon A Time in Hollywood). Rather like Judi Dench receiving an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love (1999) when she appeared on screen for a paltry eight minutes. Meritocracy was never top of the list for award panels.
What shall we expect from the glittering Bafta awards night at the Royal Albert Hall on February 2? There’ll be no Ricky Gervais telling actors and actresses to get off their high horses; the host is Graham Norton. There will, however, be a plethora of ‘stars’ berating the Baftas for living in the dark ages and speeches adorned with praise for ‘what diversity has given us’, to the gushes and tears and applause of an orchestrated audience.
What would be refreshing would be to see a black or female star stand at that plinth and condemn Hollywood and celebrity in general for their shocking racism and misogyny in their promotion of identity politics. It would be great to see someone stand up there and proclaim that they are happy to win that award because it was a good film and because they acted the part well rather than win because they had the right skin colour or appropriate genitalia. That, of course, is wishful thinking on my part. If a trend has a following that these professional liars can jump on board with, they’ll do it, abandoning any sense of morals, duty or merit.
I won’t be watching it and I imagine a good proportion of the population won’t want to see a group of self-serving, insular and narcissistic virtue-signallers either.
