Bernice Afriyie | Arts Editor
Featured image: Viola Davis at the 2015 SAG awards. | Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
In the entertainment industry, making it as a singer, actor or comedian means getting walked all over by millions of people, literally. Thousands of people travel from around the world to Hollywood for a chance to walk down the Hollywood Walk of Fame and stand, step or kneel where their favourite celebrities once did the same.
For excited fans, it’s an opportunity to participate in the worlds of their idols and add a layer of physical closeness that media may not allow. However, for celebrities like Viola Davis, who is the first recipient of a Hollywood star in 2017, the accolade means something else.
In her acceptance speech, the How to Get Away With Murder and Doubt actress spoke about growing up in poverty. As she struggled to quiet the hunger in her stomach, she never forgot to feed her aspirations and dreams of one day becoming an actress.
As she gladly accepted the honour, as well as the many honours and awards that have been bestowed her in the past, Davis remains a role model for her children, women and others who have ever faced adversity or difficulties in their lives.
That’s what makes it hard to completely dismiss entertainment events as trivial and unnecessary. Despite the inequalities that females, transgendered and queer folk and people of colour, among others, face in wages, casting, screen time and line dispersals that have been raised by members inside and outside of the industry, there still remain movies that make light of Native American history, that sensationalize queer issues, that regurgitate the same stories of black people. Yet within this system of repetitive transgressions against marginalized groups, there are still instances of people rising above their oppression and reaching their dreams.
People are sometimes quick to dismiss celebrating stars as important figures; there is no need to look to the stars when there are everyday representations of people in our lives. But that’s not the case. Not everybody has daily access to someone who has lived through being bullied for wanting
