How Agenda-Driven Bloggers Punish the Wrong People – Boyhood Under Fire

We live in era where every journalist and every news site is click-bait hungry. They’re looking for any controversy to draw readers, drive comments and jack up traffic. At what cost? When the rope tightens around the neck of honorable films because there’s nothing left to attack, it does damage to the most vulnerable.

It was a controversy that never really caught fire, certainly not in the circles that would impact Oscar voters and nowhere near the kind of heat Selma endured this year. A journalist wrote me a casual email and asked if I thought the scene in Boyhood where the gardener is encouraged by Patricia Arquette to go to night school and then appears later in the film to thank her was racist because it did two things: depict a cultural stereotype of a Latino character as a gardener, and it also depicted a white character as the savior.

That’s silly, I responded, and gave a very hurried explanation as to why. This person was miffed at my response and pitched it as a story to Latino Rebels, who published it. Had I known he planned to do that I would have given a more thorough response, of the kind my readers have been hearing for many years now. But that wasn’t HIS plan. He needed an enemy, someone to use as leverage to help prove that Richard Linklater was a racist, and hell, so is Sasha Stone at Awards Daily. That’s a good plan. Attack the one blogger in the film awards race who ever even addresses racism at all.

Meanwhile, Alejandro G. Inarritu gets no heat for not casting a single Latino character in his film. Not one. Not with a speaking part, not as a background character. No one talks about how you have to make movies about white characters to win Oscars, thus both Inarritu and Cuaron have abandoned films about their own cultural heritage in order to spoon feed Academy members the kinds of films they want to see — movies populated only by white people.

Then again, why wouldn’t someone want to invest in films about white characters, specifically white male characters because no one can complain about how they are portrayed. You see how that works? It’s funny, isn’t it. Oppression wears many masks and one of the ways it wears a mask is in the burden placed on minority actors, writers and directors to fix the problems in our culture by honoring political correctness at all costs.

Think about trying to cast a black character or a Latino character in your film and imagine the baggage attached to that. There are so many rules that apply, why even bother? It’s so much easier to just cast white people and be done with it, eh? Not one actress in the cast of Birdman could have been Mexican? Bear in mind, I’m not saying Inarritu is obligated to make films any more about his cultural heritage. He did that early in his career. Now he’s the big time, right? Time to get serious and make films only about the people Oscar voters will respond to.

Let’s say Linklater’s mother did have a conversation like that with a Latino gardener when he was growing up . Let’s say that years later they saw that same guy working as a manager at a restaurant and he walked over to thank her for her encouragement. Let’s say she’s the kind of person who talked to people all of the time and always said “you should go to school.” Here are Linklater’s choices for paying his mom her due in how she helped people throughout his life:

1) Have the scene not happen at all. Result? A film filled with white characters and not a single Latino speaking part. Roland Ruiz as Enrique does not get the speaking part in a film in the Best Picture race for the Oscars. He can’t put it on his resume, which means less power for him as a working actor.

2) Have the scene happen but just not have Patricia Arquette speak words to him. He is, after all, not to be addressed by a white person because that’s racist — even to talk to him. She can’t advise him to go to night school because that’s racist – it presumes his job isn’t good enough. She can’t encourage him to do what she herself did with her life because that presumes he wouldn’t be able to think it through on his own. Also, Ruiz does not get a speaking part. See number 1.

3) Cast the part with a white character, et viola. No Latino Rebel freakout, no pissed-off journalists trapping me in an email exchange to go off on entitled white people. No problem, right? The scene plays out as planned – Patricia Arquette’s character gets to look good. A white actor gets yet another opportunity to put Boyhood down on their resume. Oh and Ruiz does not get the part in Boyhood. See number 1.

Oppression hits minorities from both sides. White filmmakers are called racists for making films about black characters or Latino characters. Films made by black filmmakers or Latino filmmakers can never really break through in the ways that films by white filmmakers do – thus, they don’t get the money, the power, the leverage. Here is Inarritu at the top of his game, making a film that will solely appeal to whites. After this, surely he’d be going back to his roots and making a film about Mexicans right? No, he is making The Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.

How are actors of color and women ever to break in if they are screwed from both sides of the debate? The politically correct crowd pitches a fit when they are cast in a non-idealistic light. The executives won’t hire them because they don’t have major film credits and/or Oscar nominations on their resume. Ruiz can now take his Boyhood credit and parlay that into a better gig, hopefully. It’s hard enough to get work, my god, why would anyone want to make it harder?

White studio executives only want to hire white actors for their films because they believe white actors will make them more money. Oscar voters are mostly white. They pick films about white characters. When a film comes along like The Help, for instance, and a wave of protests erupt everywhere as if punishing that film, and anyone involved in it, is that going to solve any problems whatsoever? It merely punishes the numerous black actors who were hired to act in that film because the chances of any white director — and let’s face it, they’re mostly white who get hired — won’t want to be called racists by agenda-driven bloggers. The status quo marches on.

When the problem is directly addressed – black filmmaker makes movie about black characters — they are mostly ignored — at least if that filmmaker is American. Fruitvale Station, the Butler and this year’s Selma were all roundly dismissed by voters in the race. They embraced 12 Years a Slave made by the British born Steve McQueen. Boy how those voters love their Mexican directors, huh? But only when those directors come from Mexico. The problem with the oppressed under classes of whites vs. Latinos is happening here in America. Progress will take place when a Mexican American director is recognized or even acknowledged. Inarritu winning after Cuaron winning is not going to fix the problem here.

David Poland said it best on Twitter when he said – first fill the pool and then start talking about how minority characters are depicted. But if you’re going to come at me and call Richard Linklater a racist and not attack, say, a movie like American Sniper for same when one made $25 million and the other $300 million, then I’m going to call bullshit. I will also add that I think there is a fair amount of misogyny in that accusation of Arquette’s character because it presumes she’s some plantation wife trying to throw “the help” a bone when in fact she’s the kind of person who notices a smart kid when she sees one. She would have said the same thing to him whether he was black or white. Maybe you have to be a mother to understand that.

Women, people of color, should be given MORE options not less. Their appearance in films should not be conditional on righting the wrongs of society. Rosamund Pike should be free to play a sociopath and Gillian Flynn free to write one. Viola Davis should be given credit for choosing the parts SHE wants to play and tearing up the screen while doing so. Did anyone think for one minute that either Viola Davis or Octavia Spencer in The Help acted like a white-loving shadow figure in the background?

I’m sick to death of watching political correctness choke the life out of art. It is a kind of fascism, the end result of which is films only about white people, preferably men, as thriving because no one can complain about how the characters are depicted.

Do I know it’s a cultural stereotype to depict a Latino gardener? Of course. I grew up in California. I know the racism that exists against Mexican-Americans here. I see a growing population virtually ignored by the whites every day of my life. I see gardeners all of the time who are Latino, and nannies and housekeepers, and cooks and busboys. I also see teachers and cops and government officials who are Latino. I would like to see MORE diverse characters in films, not less.

Written by Grisel Y. Acosta on Latino Rebels:

But the truth is we are not dogs or wallpaper. We are like keratinocytes, which make up the main part of your skin, Mr. Linklater. You don’t think of us much, but we are very important to everyone’s existence. We build, we protect, we are flexible, and those of us in the know are very aware that if we went missing, the world would be exposed to all kinds of dangers. I can tell when we are missing. When will you be able to?

Linklater cast one of Mason’s friends with a Latino actor and one of his schoolmates, for the record.

A friend of mine on Facebook wrote the following status update, which I liked enough to want to post here:

BOYHOOD is NOT racist.
The scene in question–the “you changed my life” moment–is the kind of life-like moment that Linklater glides over ever so gracefully that I just KNEW more “intellectual” movie critics, looking for something to pick at, would latch onto as a false note. And they did! It isn’t. That moment is not about class or race. Or, more accurately, it’s not just about class or race. A couple of scenes earlier Mason, Jr. had told his girlfriend that his mom is just as confused as he is. The scene with the Latino waiter lets us see that isn’t entirely the case. It is designed to show that both kids are starting to view their mom in a role other than that of “mother.”