雅思课外读物--Why Hollywood refuses actors of color?

摘要：雅思中国网雅思君这里给大家带来的是关于好莱坞话题的一篇读物：Why Hollywood refuses actors of color?这句话的意思是“好莱坞为什么不拍非白人影片？”并不是“好莱坞为什么拒绝有眼的演员”啊喂，千万不要理解错！一起看正文吧！

The Golden Globe nominations, unveiled last week, featured a number of nods for minority TV actors but few candidates of color in film. Of the 35 nominees for best director, actor, actress and supporting actor, only three were minorities: director Alejandro González Iñárritu and actors Will Smith and Idris Elba. None of the 10 nominees for best picture were led by minority stars.

The frustrations over Hollywood’s lack of diversity could grow by the time of the next Oscars, hosted in February by comedian Chris Rock, who last year wrote an essay calling Hollywood “a white industry.” When Rock first hosted the show, in 2005, he joked that the Oscars’ four black nominees made it “kind of like the Def Oscar Jam.”

The academy has yet to announce its nominees, but predictions from Oscar handicappers have surfaced only a few minority hopefuls: Elba in “Beasts of No Nation” and Samuel L. Jackson in “The Hateful Eight” for best supporting actor; Smith for best actor in“Concussion”; and Iñárritu for best director for “The Revenant.” Also, “Compton” is a long shot for best picture.

No women of color are in the running to win any of the 10 lead- or supporting-actress Oscar nods this year, a discouraging sign coming shortly after Viola Davis became the first African American woman to win an Emmy as lead actress in a drama, for her role in Shonda Rhimes’s “How to Get Away With Murder.”

“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity,” Davis said in September during her acceptance speech. “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”

The academy said recently it will launch a five-year plan, called A2020, intended to encourage film executives to hire a more diverse talent base. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in September that, although the academy “has no power over Hollywood [and] nothing to do with hiring,” she hoped the plan can get studios and agencies to “widen their normal stream of thought.”

Filmmakers, in turn, have pointed the finger at their financiers. Director Ridley Scott, criticized for casting white actors, including Christian Bale as Moses, in “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” said last year the move was needed to secure the money for his $140 million epic: “I can’t mount a film of this budget . . . and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. . . . I’m just not going to get it financed.”

Studios and film crews that did fill roles with actors of color faced resistance this year from angry fans, including over Boyega in his role as a stormtrooper in the new “Star Wars” and Jordan for his “Fantastic Four” role playing a superhero who is white in the original comic-book version.

When big films this year focused on minority characters, many instead filled their spots with white actors. In “Aloha,” for instance, Emma Stone was cast to play a Chinese Hawaiian woman.

After “Gods of Egypt,” a fantasy tale set in the ancient Middle East, was cast with mostly white actors in Egyptian roles, director Alex Proyas apologized, saying that “the process of casting a movie has many complicated variables(变量), but it is clear that our casting choices should have been more diverse.”

“Selma” director Ava DuVernay said the “Gods of Egypt” apology was an “unusual occurrence worth noting” for a casting problem “that happens all the time.” She also said it made her value the minority castings in “Star Wars” and “Creed” even more, tweeting, “We all deserve icons(偶像) in our own image.” (我们大家都有权拥有与自己形象一致的偶像。)

Vocabulary

Top-grossing movies 票房最高的电影

Nomination 提名

Dominate 统治;控制

Predominately 占统治地位地;绝大多数地

Box office 票房

Franchise 连锁

Stuttering 结巴的;不持续的

Spreadsheet 电子表格;财务报表

Grandeur 辉煌

Skin tone 肤色

Monolithic 整体的;巨大的

Solidify 加剧;加固

Slight 轻慢;稍微的

Chastise 指责;批判

Variable 变量

Icon 偶像

雅思真题重现：

It also suggests in which of these three waves the ancestors of various groups of modern native Americans first reached the continent. (剑7T3P2)

参考译文：这同样表明了在三次浪潮中的哪一次，各种现代本地美国人的祖先首先到达这块大陆。

Toothed species in general employ more of the frequency spectrum, and produce a wider variety of sounds, than baleen species (though the sperm whale apparently produces a monotonous series of high-energy clicks and little else).(剑4T1P2)

参考译文：齿鲸们可以更多地利用频谱，发出多种声音。当然，抹香鲸只会发出一系列单调激烈的咔嗒声。

Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer - lexical as well as social and commercial.(剑5T1P1)

参考译文：除了规范混乱的实际需求，字典的热卖与英语人群中中产阶层崛起有着密不可分的联系，他们渴望通过定义和限制来征服丰富多彩的世界——不只是词汇这一领域，还有社会和商业。

However, it should be remembered that not everybody is motivated by jobs that are high in independence, variety and responsibility.(剑6T3P2)

参考译文：但是，值得提起的是，高独立性、变化性以及责任感的工作并不能激励每一个人。

There is a wide range of photosynthetic responses of plants to variations in light intensity. (剑5T4P3)

参考译文：对光强度的变化，植物可对其作出多种光合作用的反应。

An important project, led by the biological anthropologist Robert Williams, focused on the variants (called Gm allotypes) of one particular protein - immunoglobin G - found in the fluid portion of human blood.(剑7T3P2)

参考译文：由生物人类学家罗伯特•威廉姆斯领导的一项重要工程把研究点聚焦在了免疫球蛋白G变体(又叫做免疫球蛋白同种异型Gm )上——在人类血液流体中可以找到这种变本。