The 89th Academy Awards took place this weekend and host Jimmy Kimmel provided us with more than enough skits to keep us entertained throughout the show. One in which a group of tourists were brought into the auditorium and surprised by the endless amount of celebrities in the room. As soon as the tourists came in Kimmel asked them their names and where they were from. Everything seemed pretty typical until he came across an Asian woman named Yurlee. He was quick to make a joke out of her name and proceeded to ask her husband’s name, which was Patrick, Kimmel laughingly stated “See, that’s a name”.
This was not the only instance in which the host decided to poke fun at names that are “out of the norm” for white people. Moonlight star, Mahershala Ali, took home the Oscar for best supporting actor and during his speech said his daughter was born just four days prior. It was after his acceptance speech that Kimmel asked what he had named his daughter, telling Ali that with a name like his he could not name his daughter “Amy”. Jimmy Kimmel went ahead and poked fun at Mahershala’s name once again during the tourist skit, telling the audience to yell out “Mahershala” when they came through the door.
They use it as punch lines to jokes and truly believe in their brain that every person in each minority group has the same three stereotypical names.
The Oscars only depicted some examples of many times Hollywood has tried to whitewash a minorities culture by making them feel like their name is not white enough for the business. Bruno Mars, whose real name is Peter Hernandez, said in an interview that he had to change his name in order to prevent stereotypes against him by sounding “more white” and to stop his record label from trying to make him the next Enrique Iglesias. Similarly, former Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello was told by an E! news host to “drop” her last name because it is “weird” and “too difficult to pronounce“. Both of these artists coming from Latino backgrounds, where their name are not considered abnormal whatsoever.
By Hollywood’s standards, if your name is not something that’s typical to them then it is cause for jokes and it is portrayed as being “odd”. They never fail to remind you that you are different and never truly stop trying to shape you into what they think is the norm. This comes as no surprise since it seems that what this industry is best as is whitewashing every thing they can possibly get their hands on. While I agree that we are progressing in Hollywood, I do not think that Hollywood will ever truly be accepting of diversity until it’s members learn to stop using our names as a punch lines to their dim witted sense of humor.
