Do the Oscars Even Matter?
How Celebrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from Top to Bottom is the Only Way to Keep Award Shows Beautiful and Relevant
Ah, the Academy Awards. The dazzling light at the end of every year’s madcap tunnel of US movie releases. How we love to hate you, Oscar season!
Most years when the nominations are announced, there’s a steady stream of loud internet scoffing, featuring much grumbling about snubs, eye-rolls over Academy darlings, and protestations of how irrelevant the Oscars are becoming (I’ve certainly been guilty of this!).
But like clockwork, despite the scoffing, it’s an equally great American pastime to gather with family and friends every spring, surrounded by candy, popcorn, and home-printed ballots, laughing and crying over the telecast and cheering when our faves win the little gold statues (yes, this is also me. #BongHive FOREVER!).
This year’s nominees were announced on March 15th, and included a few surprising twists and historic nominations. Pandemic World has affected everything about the process: the broadcast has been pushed back to April, and people have mostly been watching the nominated movies in their living rooms instead of in cinemas.
But perhaps most striking about the current Oscars discourse is that back in September, The Academy dropped a bombshell of a press release: starting for movies made in 2022 (i.e. beginning to take effect at the 2024 Oscar broadcast), there are new diversity standard requirements for a movie to be considered for the coveted Best Picture nomination.
(ooooh, ahhhhh)
But newsworthy though it was, this development was anything but surprising. It’s hard to deny that pressure has been mounting on the Academy, especially for the past decade or so, to deal with its internal and structural issues of racism, tokenism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, and more.
Let me break it down.
Did you know that according to 2020 data, a mere 16% of Academy members and voters are nonwhite? And only 32% are women, with no available percentage for nonbinary members.
That means most of the people determining the nominations and winners, even in the Year of Our Lord 2021, continue to be white dudes.
A homogenous Academy is a problem. Because it leads to stuff like this:
- Most award-nominated and winning films through Oscars history made about race relations tend to be directed and written by white people, often containing white savior narratives that relegate Black cast members to supporting roles. (See: Amistad, Driving Miss Daisy, Green Book, Crash, The Defiant Ones, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Blind Side, The Help. Even Lorraine Hansberry’s magnificent A Raisin in the Sun was directed by a white guy)
- Until this year, only five women had ever been nominated for Best Director, never more than two in the same year, they were all white, and only Kathryn Bigelow has won the award for it.
- Kathryn Bigelow (yep, for that same movie, The Hurt Locker) is the only woman to have ever snagged the Best Picture trophy.
- Very few characters in movie scripts are disabled, despite the fact that disabled folks make up the largest minority group in the US (and when they are included in scripts, usually able-bodied actors are cast to portray them, shutting doors to disabled actors).
I’m super frustrated by those numbers because I have some crucial insider info:
It doesn’t have to be this way.
It turns out white dudes are not preternaturally gifted at filmmaking, they have just historically been given the most opportunity to do it. There are countless talented storytellers in the United States and SO MANY of them are women or gender diverse, or queer! So many aren’t white! So many are disabled!
In fact, when it comes to independent cinema and documentaries, where the budgets, stakes, and audience awareness tend to be lower, we already see immense diversity and representation across many spectrums.
But we don’t always see that diversity reflected in the big cash cow blockbusters that draw in billions of dollars and millions of viewers. We don’t always see that diversity, both on-screen and behind-the-camera, reflected when the nominees for Best Picture are released.
Many of us are asking (and have been asking for a while) why do we even bother? Should we just give up and let the Oscars fade into oblivion? #Cancel them once and for all?
Isn’t the whole premise of award shows kinda exclusionary, gatekeepery, and problematic anyway? How do you compare the inherent worthiness of films across genres, budgets, and subjective taste?!
Maybe it is a lost cause. But here’s my take: before we give up on the red carpet, the amazing outfits, the family gatherings, the prediction ballots, the goofy hosts, the touching In Memoriams, the wacky and heartfelt acceptance speeches, and this special celebration of the glorious art of moviemaking, let’s really give true inclusion a go. Let’s see if there’s a way we can make crews, writers rooms, press junkets, and yes, The Academy itself, actually mirror the beautiful and diverse U.S. population.
It’s an ambitious plan. But like I said earlier, the low-budget and documentary worlds are already way more diverse than summer blockbusters or the Academy membership would have you believe.
So how do we make the whole thing more equitable? How do we kick down the doors? In this self-perpetuating industry where white men chair boards, hold the cards, and keep hiring younger white men to replace them, how do we get award nominations that actually reflect the magnificent, authentic, diverse storytelling that’s already happening in less glittery corners of the movie world? And how do we make sure more storytellers than ever get access to this world of film, so that it keeps on happening and the industry actually becomes a more joyful and less exclusionary place?
I think these new regulations could be an exciting step in that direction.
Now, a quick aside to acknowledge that some people have claimed these regulations will somehow limit creativity in movies, that the Academy has decreed that it will only greenlight Politically Correct, Critical Race Theory Guilt Tripping, Propaganda Pieces.
Reader, it’s not true. You can read the nitty gritty of the new rules in the link above, but there are really only two points of note:
- The new inclusion standards have to do with on and off screen representation of minorities in the following categories:
Race
Gender
Sexuality
Disability - To qualify for a Best Picture nominee, a movie must meet two of the four new standards covering the following areas:
— on-screen representation (cast, storyline)
— off-screen creative leadership and crew composition (who are the department heads? Who’s being hired to operate the cameras?)
— opportunities for paid internships, apprenticeships, development, and training (who is getting their foot in the door each year?)
— marketing, publicity, and distribution (which audiences are being sought out? Which outlets are being pitched?)
So you can see that these new rules aren’t at all saying “you can’t hire white actors anymore” or “all war films must cast half the soldiers as women.” It’s clear that any kind of story, with any kind of cast, can still win Oscars including Best Picture. The whitest, most able-bodied, straight-het-dudebro fest this side of The Irishman can still take home that little golden man, if the Academy so deems.
It’ll just have to meet a few “if”s and hustle a bit on the side.
It can win… if it’s directed by a woman, has a diverse writers table, has a crew that includes racial minorities and women, and offers an awesome paid internship program to aspiring Black filmmakers.
Or maybe it has a women-led marketing team, and a training program targeted to disabled or LGBTQ+ professionals who want to advance their career development.
I’m happy about this. Because this level of inclusion in production and storytelling is already happening beautifully at all levels in the film world. So I’m excited for there to be an incentive for it to happen more. Just take a second to think about some of the most powerful cinematic storytelling that’s happened in the last few decades.
Consider the striking heart, authenticity, and empathy present in 12 Years a Slave, Moonlight, and Selma, movies about Black experience that actually featured visionary Black directors at the helm.
Consider how the two most heartfelt and joyful adaptations of Little Women, a woman-penned American classic centered around young women coming-of-age, have been directed and screenwritten by (YOU GUESSED IT) women!
Think about how two of the most memorable movies of 2020, Pixar’s imaginative Soul and Regina King’s stunning One Night in Miami featured Black stories at the heart of the narratives, and were tied together by Black playwright Brian Kemp’s directing and writing prowess.
Remember how the coolest and most influential action movie ever was written and directed by two trans women??
We’re already breaking cycles. We’re already busting into production meetings and writer’s rooms. And movies are getting more beautiful for it. Let’s keep cranking up that dial!
Of course, no conversation about the Oscars would be complete without a reminder that a movie having or not having an Academy Award has never been its defining quality. Film school professors all over the world assign Citizen Kane every semester, and that didn’t win Best Picture.
Some very award-winning films like Gravity (which took home Best Director, among many other categories) don’t stay high in the national lexicon after they leave the silver screen. And some movies that perfectly capture a historical moment or subject, like Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, will only grow in their import and esteem as they’re watched by future generations.
But I dunno, there’s still something magic about award shows. It’s a really cool chance to shine a spotlight on some of the most exciting work that’s happening in the industry. When it works like it should, it offers recognition and gratitude to veteran artists and gives a boost to the young artists who stand on their shoulders.
So I say let’s keep the awards (for now), but let’s make them better. And to make the award shows better, the actual industry has to shape up and start paying more attention to the diverse talent that’s already within its ranks.
There are so many stories to tell.
There are so many brilliant artists ready to tell them.
That’s worthy of a party.
