The Academy Awards are considered incomplete without a tribute to the legends who have contributed immensely to the film industry worldwide. Although the ceremony rather came to the limelight due to the unceremonious altercation between Wills Smith and Chris Rock. The Indian fans were enraged for some other reason. Oscars failed to honour the contributions of Dilip Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar, the stalwarts of Indian Cinema. The event left a bad taste and was reminiscent of the biased behaviour of the Britishers during colonial rule. The actors who found mentioned were Sidney Poitier, the first bohemian to win the best actor award, William Hurt, Ivan Reitman, the film and television director, and honorary mention of legendary filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich and Richard Donner. There was even a mention of the French star Jean-Paul Belmondo, but the legends Lata Mangeshkar and Dilip Kumar who had been a revered part of the largest movie-making industry were not found worthy of even a mention.
Oscars-Diverse or Diversity Biased
Though individuals of various races, colours and gender have received nominations in the past, the majority of the winners are still from Hollywood, white or men. According to a survey on the number of Oscar nominations conducted by the Insider in February 2021since the last decade. The results were startling as more than 89% of the nominations went to white people and 71.1% went to men.
Indian Fans enraged, set Twitter on Fire in anger
The omission of the names of Dilip Sahib and Lata Mangeshkar was enough to enrage the fans. Sentiments flooded online with fans tweeting expressing their resentment. As one of the fans tweeted “And the Oscars failed to pay tribute to Dilip Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar…. can’t see beyond the USA”. The overlooking of the contribution of these legends is simply unpardonable considering that the former has eight Filmfare awards with 19 nominations, a Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award, Padma Vibhushan(2015), and the latter has to her credit recording songs for more than a thousand Hindi movies and over 36 Indian and foreign languages. She has also to her credit India’s highest civilian award ‘The Bharat Ratna’ and 3 national Filmfare awards.
Oscars 2022:A saga of Bias and Discrimination
The discrimination was clear when Hollywood failed to acknowledge an icon who was once hailed as “The greatest Indian actor of all time” in a Rediff readers poll of 2011 another whose prowess made her being known as the ” Voice of the Millennium.”By doing so the Oscars have in fact given the world one more reason to be a laughing stock.