Why the acceptance speech of Viola Davis for the best “Fent” support actress was so powerful
Viola Davis' acceptance speech for the best support actress began with a thank you to the Academy and this observation: “You know, there is a place where everyone with the greatest potential is gathered.”
Break. Some viewers may have felt a nauseous pang. Was the Fences Actress about to deliver a sequence from the Golden Globes of Meryl Streep? Was the next line going to be “this play”, in order to defend the presidential denounced entertainment industry, in order to preach the truth and inclusion, in order to arouse another skirmish to know if Hollywood is too autonomous?
No. The following line: “A place, and it's the cemetery.”
Phew. Davis' speech quickly became viral and was largely acclaimed for many reasons, and bonked among them was simply good writing. She opened with a question and gave an answer that little would have guessed. It exploited the power of surprise, a power has amply demonstrated elsewhere in the Oscars.
Viola Davis' #Oscates The acceptance speech was incredible. Look at it here https://t.co/fs8vscfx3b pic.twitter.com/cope2glkkv
– The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 27, 2017
The speech also explained to the reason for which Davis deserves an Oscar. She seemed to get up with emotion, almost out of breath, and yet her words were clear and her sentences skillfully punctuated. She beckoned with the precision of her How to escape with the murder Character Annalise Keating in law, but she showed the brutality of the feeling that Mrs. Miller had Doubt. But that didn't act. Or if it was, it was so good not to look like. Which is, as Leonardo DiCaprio said since the scene elsewhere in the night, the definition of a big game.
The most remarkable: the content of the speech. As a rule, the acceptance of memorable Oscars make explicit political points, include blunders or mark milestones. But Davis drew attention through the simple discussion of art, as well as specific and sincere cries to colleagues and their loved ones.
“People ask me all the time:” What kind of stories do you want to tell, alto? “” She said. “And I say, to exhume these bodies, to exhume these stories. The stories of people who dreamed of big and who have never seen these dreams materialize, the people who fell in love and lost. I have become an artist – and I thank God that I did – because we are the only profession that celebrates what a life means.”
The resonance with the work of Davis was obvious: Fences is based on the August play Wilson on a family in the black working class of the 1950s whose members are not famous, which simply endeavor and endeavor in the context of society and history. Wilson “has exhumed and exalted ordinary people,” said Davis; His story concerned “people, lyrics, life, forgiveness and grace”.
But the resonance with other themes of the night and the time was also essential. The best image nominees included many stories of culturally invisible and frustrated: the post-recessive Texans have exceeded the opportunity in Hell or high waterLow level mathematicians of NASA especially forgotten by history in Hidden figuresorphans and poor families in India Lion. More specifically, winner of the best film Moonlight Full of the story of a poor black gay simply surviving, an ordinary life of the genre which is so rarely portrayed that it seems extraordinary.
So there is in fact politics here, although subtle. In the context of conversations on diversity and inclusion to Oscars and in America more generally, the praise of Davis on the stories on ordinary people of upset dreams necessarily has a political meaning: portraying the struggles before not exempt means that life other than white, right, easy and / or male matter.
The point was reinforced, lightly, as she thanked her sisters, remembering: “We were white women rich in the Tea Party Games. “” They played as white and rich, perhaps, because that was what society had told them to fantasize. Davis has shown the power to offer alternatives.
