The Problematic Andrea Riseborough Fray

 

White women are madly frolicking together to campaign for Andrea Riseborough’s work in Michael Morris’s For Leslie.

Low budget films get made every year. 

Yet, for some odd reason, Andrea Riseborough’s high value friends Kate Winslet, Frances Fisher, and Alison Janney (For Leslie costar) are campaigning viciously for Riseborough to take a wild card slot in the upcoming Oscars leading actress race— which has historically favored them since its inception ninety-plus years ago. 

Secondly, this worthwhile discussion of self-promotion campaign led by prominent voters (some who have won Oscars and Emmys) seems louder than any in recent years, especially in the digital age where this is happening in front of our very eyes on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Even Indiewire is writing about this strange supportive rise; Riseborough already moving up to the number five position on Gold Derby, the awards prediction site. Whereas the support of women of color is so quiet, that you could hear a pin drop and nobody would even race to pick it up. Have these same women vouching for Riseborough ever consider the years and years of injustice towards nonwhite candidates? How the Academy can travel all over the world for their nominees and still choose the whitest and brightest to compete for the biggest acting award of their lives? Were they vouching for Alfre Woodard (Clemency), Lupita Nyong’o (Us), Regina Hall (Support the Girls), Hong Chau (Downsizing), any of the Parasite cast, Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha), Maggie Cheung/Tony Cheung (In the Mood for Love)— an endless people of color snubbed for decades? Probably not.

These women’s dream nominees are extremely colorist and ill-favored, excluding the incredible performances of Till’s Danielle Deadwyler and The Woman King’s Viola Davis— whom Frances Fisher claims are locked votes, but this post does not reflect that. At least, Michelle Yeoh is still present— likely the only candidate they can tolerate. They’d probably swap her out for Anya Taylor-Joy’s work in The Menu. 

When white actresses win— do you know who they often call out in vapid, passionless speeches? White men. Think about Frances McDormand winning her third Oscar, talking about making opportunities for women. You wonder “what kind of woman?” Her kind? Or even Michelle Williams (the white actress), whose rarely worked with a woman of color, calling out the male system. Cate Blanchett— who will likely win her third Oscar anyway for playing the cold, talented, patriarchally benefiting conductor Lydia Tar— is another white actress calling out the system that benefits her. Recently, she disregarded white men at the Critics Choice Awards in a tone deaf speech not as passionately or heartily felt as the night’s other winners— first timers Ke Huy Quan, Angela Bassett, and Sheryl Lee Ralph. 

In this post-Trump era, we are witnessing why white women overwhelmingly voted to elect one of history’s most violent presidents. White women can spit on white supremacy until the cows come home, but the reality is that white supremacy has always adored them, cherished them as though they were the prizes of womanhood, of the very cinematic art that still has many firsts to conquer for women of color. In these white women winners, the predominately white voters either see themselves reflected or desired. At times, you question if these awards truly regard talent at all— because they only seem to celebrate each other. In the year 2023, Black women have yet to win Best Direction, Best Screenplay (adapted or original), Best Score, Best Cinematography as well as Indigenous, Latino, and non-binary women. Asian women, especially South Asian, have a longer journey to go. Chloe Zhao may have won many awards in her season, but what if the vehicle was not fronted by an Oscar winning white actress? Would Zhao have been so heavily honored, so riddled with award show firsts? Can you imagine the repercussions to happen if nonwhite industry bigwigs (sadly so few to begin with) campaigned as bravely and passionately as these white people are for Riseborough? Probably very severe in an industry where blacklisting can be so easily arranged. 

This Andrea Riseborough situation reveals a dirtier, uglier side to how powerful whiteness can be, how it can shift votes on the very pedestal that idolizes them. No matter how one feels about the Oscars— a questionable organization that still reeks of a certain privilege— it is very scary.  A nonwhite artist can possess so much talent and play that “working twice as hard as them” game. It doesn’t change the simple fact that someone white can always come out of nowhere and victoriously steal the spotlight, undeserving or not.