A quarter of a century ago, John Grisham’s bestseller “The Jury” was made into a film. Matthew McConaughey, who until then had only appeared in commercials, had his breakthrough as an actor. He received an MTV Movie Award for his portrayal of a lawyer desperate over the difference between law and justice. That was 1997, and you don’t even have to look into the archives to get the assumption that at the end of the 1990s the MTV Movie Award was rarely given to people who could be described as “diverse enough”. Which speaks neither against McConaughey nor against the film “The Jury”. But maybe against a term used by Deutsche Welle.
A French, not exaggeratedly discreet culture magazine speaks against the film, which at the time rated the film, in which primarily racial conflicts are negotiated, as “disgusting”, “fascist” and overall “puke”. Seen in this way, the criticism of the Emmys, which have just been awarded in Los Angeles as the most important series and television film awards in the world, has been downright mild. At first glance.
Kate Winslet thanked women for living in a time when women support women
The Emmys – eleven prizes were awarded to the Netflix production “The Crown” – are diverse, according to Deutsche Welle, “but not diverse enough”. In fact, at the 73rd Awards, it was mainly white actresses and white actors who won the prizes. At the time of nomination, however, the people-of-color share was still 44 percent. The disappointment was great. All over. Not just on the PoC side.
No wonder that the thanks from Oscar winner Kate Winslet, leading actress in the HBO Max produced on the platform and with three Emmys successful mini-series “Mare of Easttown”, then turned out slightly strange. She thanked the women because, thank God, one lives in a time when women support women.
RuPaul won for the fourth time in a row for “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and is now “the most decorated Black artist in Emmy history” with a total of eleven Emmys, according to “Hollywood Reporter”.
(Photo: Rich Fury / AFP)
Of course, it would also be a good thing, that is no longer Winslet’s work, if men supported women. But it would also be good if women supported men, men supported men and blacks blacks. And when whites supported blacks. And whites whites. And actually everything that the paint box of biodiversity, which also includes humans, has to offer.
To support, appreciate and respect one another without even thinking about outward appearances such as skin color and gender: That would be timely. Totally diverse. And if you had a DeLorean DMC-12 converted into a time machine, like Doc Brown, you immediately fled into the 22nd century. Where everything that lives lives in peaceful coexistence and mutual appreciation, while the descendants of the SPD (there will be little left, but they will already) demand respect in talk shows (also) completely free of charge. Because it will be part of the standard equipment. Hashtags like “#emmysowhite” would be superfluous. A dream.
As it is, almost nothing is right, because apart from the quite a few prizes for women, there were too few excellent non-white actors at the Emmys awarded on Monday night. With RuPaul (“Drag Race”) and Michaela Coel (“I May Destroy You”) only two black winners took the stage. In the important categories, the white stars were among themselves. Many people find that what one shares is unjust – and yet one can explicitly object with a view to the criticism of the jury (!): Law and justice are not the same.
The disproportion was particularly evident when the British Olivia Colman (as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown”) received the award for best drama actress. Their competition was almost exclusively black – and then they were left behind in the collective.
For some years now, there has been increasing criticism of juries that award architecture, art, music, film or literary prizes in a way that is not always happy in various respects. This applies to both small and large juries. And it goes for big, well-known prizes (like the Emmys) and not so big, not so well-known awards (like the German BDA Prize for Architecture). Incidentally, Wikipedia says that this prize is awarded by the Association of German Architects. That is only half the story, after all, after a century of being masculine, the Association of German Architects is now known as the Association of German Architects. Hello Wikipedia? Please correct.
Correction, however, is not the task of a jury that has to literally judge the success of a work on the terrain of aesthetics – and not the luck or failure of a diverse society. Of course you want a diverse society and everyone’s participation. What else.
But why are juries, which logically stand at the end of the art production, repeatedly made responsible if everything was done wrong at the beginning of the same that could be done wrong? The jury is simply the wrong place to correct structural mistakes elsewhere at the last second.
Admonishing juries to price a certain diversity formula in the result of their appraisal of works is even counterproductive: It undermines the meaning of the matter – because literary, music or art prizes are at least ideally based on aesthetic skill and not on any form bound by externality. Prizes that are awarded on the artistic field are per se prizes that say nothing about people and their affiliations, but only something about universally active artists.
The jury, which is supposed to be right in the end, cannot cure the structural injustice
At both the Emmys and the Oscars, it is clear that juries are becoming more diverse and broader – and rightly so, because that is exactly what the world is like: fundamentally heterogeneous, diverse. This must also apply to juries. Thousands of jurors (male, female, male) now vote on the most important film prizes. But as a rule there is no discussion about it: And that’s exactly why the current Emmy Awards from Los Angeles – finally many women, once again depressingly low PoC quota – reflect the reality of art production and art reception in a particularly unvarnished manner. That is what should be criticized.
In a number of arts, women and non-white people are disadvantaged because of a historically grown, surprisingly difficult to overcome cultural understanding (male, white, western). This structural inequality leads to structural injustice. The jury, which is supposed to be right in the end, cannot cure this injustice.
Sometimes you sit in juries in which – unlike at the Emmy Awards – there is still real discussion. The sponsors are aware of the importance of a prize, which is also effective in the media, and which even in the very strange category “diverse enough?” may convince. It is always embarrassing when juries want to consider a candidate from Lower Bavaria or, worse, should (regional proportionality), who should preferably also be a woman (gender) and please black (skin color). Whoever emerges victorious from such a struggle is always also a loser. One should not change the judges’ judgments, but the conditions of art production. Incidentally, in “Die Jury” everything leads to a happy ending.