The Award for Snubbed Picture Goes ToBy Sharazade ThompsonTAMPA, Fla.- Around the corner is the 87th Academy Awards and one film in particular has not received many golden statue nominations, leaving people wondering as to why the film was snubbed.There are 24 nomination categories at the Academy Awards, from best picture to original screenplay, but the film Selma only received two nominations best picture and best original song. In an NPR interview, writer Morris said any number of things could have contributed to the lack of nominations. People are not used to seeing strong characters or movies played by African Americans. Even though Selma has a diverse cast of African-American actors, none were nominated. All 20 nominees in the four actor and actress categories are white. Sure, the thing that I notice about what people of color get nominated for which Oscars - the Academy seems very comfortable nominating people of color who fall into a very familiar relationship to white people in movies, Morris said. So I'm talking about playing slaves.David Carr, a media writer for The New York Times, recently wrote that recognition is important in part because in this instance the film celebrates someone who was not in service to others. Greene asked if a lot of people who were voting might have been uncomfortable with the portrayal of black leadership, a movie topic that it rarely seen. I would say that there is a kind of comfort with what people call a white savior narrative, where the point of view of something like the civil rights movement, the point of view belongs to a white actor, Morris said. The agent of the change is white. That relationship is how Americans come to understand race in this country at the movies.