“When I look down at the golden statue may it remind me and every little child that no matter where you’re from your dreams are valid.” These were the words that ended Lupita Nyong’o’s acceptance speech after winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years A Slave.
Her performance as Patsey was one of gruelling endurance, suffering at the hands of her slavemaster Edwin Epps, played by Michael Fassbender. Media outlets and online speculators pitted her against fellow nominee Jennifer Lawrence, for her performance as Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle. This becomes important when we remember that only one black performer has won the Best Actress Award (Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball, 2002) and six have won Best Supporting Actress (including Nyong’O). A 2012 study concluded that only 6% of the voters were non-white, and 23% female.
Clearly, the voting panel for the Academy Awards is heavily biased towards whites, and for 12 Years A Slave (it also won best picture) to come out on top is a huge victory. The most awarded film of the night, Gravity, was directed by Alfonso Cuarón, a Mexican. Maybe we’ll see start to see a shift from most of the celebrating films being of a white Western origin? One can hope.
12 Years A Slave was pitted against heavy competition in the Best Picture Award, going against Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street (a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award and regarded as one of the greatest film directors alive), David O. Russel’s American Hustle (three consecutive nominators for Best Director), and Spike Jonze’s Her (four Academy nominations).
12 Years A Slave was a brutal real-life tale of endurance and human spirit, and when director Steve McQueen picked up the award, he dedicated it to the “21 million people still suffer slavery today”, and Nyong’o said in her speech “It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s”.