VivirLatino

Gracias to all the twitter followers who watched the Oscars with us last night.

I’ll admit I haven’t seen most of the movies that were nominated and won. Ok, I’ve only seen one pero por lo menos that film saw an award with Penelope Cruz winning mejor supporting actress for her role in Vicky Christina Barcelona. That’s the closest there was to a Latino win (and yes I know Pe’s not Latina. She’s Spanish as in European). Pero Latino weren’t completely absent. I counted four musical references to West Side Story and after the Oscars there was a commercial for a new ABC show that used a racist Latino gang stereotype.

I was very bothered that neither The Garden nor Trouble the Water won for best documentary. That award went to a film about a French tightrope walker.

The Oscars seemed to have a problem with foreigners, especially ones with accents, especially POC. Yes, I know that Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture. Pero the main awards went to the Brit production teams and the tech awards and musical awards going the actual Indians. I haven’t seen Slumdog pero white directed movies about non-white people always concern me, especially when the directors based the film on a book written by someone from Indian, and let’s not forget the fact that Great Britain colonized India. As I write this I am watching Jimmy Kimmel make references to the child actors from Slumdog Millionaire never acting and never being on sidewalks. And did Ryan Seacrest just hold up a paper with their names because he couldn’t read them?

Pero Hollywood loves POC, especially when they sing and dance. A.R Rahman’s performance complete with a quasi Bollywood dance number was met with much applause. Pero when POC spoke, especially when they spoke with an accent people thought it was hillarious. Take for example the Japanese winner for mejor foreign film Departures. The audience was laughing, not cuz there were jokes pero cuz the winner had an accent. I even saw some tweets on how director Yojiro Takita was screaming cuz no one could understand him.

So POC just keep singing and dancing, just don’t speak, especially if you have an accent.