What Does Diversity Look Like for the Academy — Now That We Have Parasite? An Oscars ‘Best Picture’ Visualisation
January and February are awards season. Like the rest of us with our New Year’s resolutions, the glitzy and glamorous of the entertainment industry also take this time to look back on all the work that was done the previous year — and to give praise where is praise is due.
However, if BAFTA’s recent pointed acceptance speeches from Joaqin Phoenix and Rebel Wilson are any indicator, the giving of praise is being called into stark question. This frustration has been stirring and rumbling below the surface for many years, and each year comes up anew, pointing to every list of nominees in their various categories.
The biggest and glitzy-est of them all is still to come this Sunday, either the most yawn- or controversy-worthy awards show of the season (depending on your personal preference): the Oscars.
In honour of the 92nd Academy Awards, I have put together a visualisation of all the films that have won Best Picture, from the first year in 1928, until now, 2019. (2020 is pending, of course — who do you think will win?)
It started with my own interest in “seeing” the metadata of the Oscar winners, and the metadata of my own movie watching. I wanted to know “how many of these Best Pictures have I seen?” With Rebel and Joaqin’s comments in mind, along with along with ongoing attention brought to Hollywood’s lack of diversity, I wanted to support diversity in film by making an effort to watch specific kinds of films. How about a film directed by a woman? That’s easy, only one female director has won Best Picture in the history of the Academy Awards so far (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2009).
What about movies directed by a person of colour, minority, or a gender-nonconforming person? I might want to watch a Best Picture with a female lead, or a female hero, not another damsel in distress. How many of these picks represent a non-mainstream, non-majority, non-dual world view that I could relate to?
When I see #OscarsSoWhite, I think, “OK then, I would like to support film-makers from underrepresented groups. If I hear #MeToo and #OscarsSoMale, then I want to support female filmmakers and watch more of their films, circumvent the mainstream, and get to the stuff that means something to me.
Assuming that the storyteller (a.k.a director) is the lens through which this point of view emerges, how may of these Best Pictures are points of view that I can also see through? There are certainly a few, and a slowly rising number, no doubt, but for the non-film-buff, just perusing the Academy Awards archive, what are the chances of encountering diversity in this pool of content?
Each circle represents a film. The outside of the circle represents the director of the film, and it can be one of four types: male, female, non-binary, and visible minority. Or course “female” can be mixed with non-binary or visible minority by making the squiggle or the bold line red, however, there are no such examples above. Default black means male. The ‘visible minority’ cast is determined, in this case, as any individual that would identify as a person of colour (poc), or that was born and/or practices predominantly outside of North America or Western Europe.
The inside of the circle represents the leading character — the hero or heroine. In many cases it is two people, either in a partnership, or in a romantic relationship, like the infamous Gone with the Wind (1940). The inside circle can be mixed as well, to mean more specific things, most notably the mix of romantic, non-binary, and visible minority of Moonlight (2017), which was truly a first for the Oscars. The number below the circle is the year of the award. The inside of the smaller circle can be filled in or checked off, as the visualisation can also be a personal checklist of films seen and not seen.
What does diversity in film mean to the casual movie watcher? Not everyone who buys a movie ticket or loads up Netflix is particularly concerned with the intelligentsia take on diversity in their evening content.
Most people just want to kick back, relax, and watch something they can relate to and be entertained by — but we can all agree that the content we consume through film is an additional source of information which offers us exposure to certain ideas, messages and conventions.
As a contrast, I’ve created one for the Booker Prize winners as well, as it is one of the most buzzworthy literary awards. Literature, while also not perfect, has offered me access to a more diverse pool of stories, heroes and situations. I feel this is reflected in the graphic somewhat. Also, books are consistently used as source material for films, so how does some of this diversity get lost along the way?
Alternatively, here is a visualisation of playwright and film connoisseur Arun W-P’s own curated list of favourite films : the best of the 1990s and 2000, a diverse spread. The legend has been adjusted to highlight non-english speaking films.
What does diversity look like in film, and other content that we consume? There isn’t any one full, clear answer, but this visualisation has helped me put things into perspective somewhat, a bird’s-eye view if you will.
While there isn’t one clear answer to the question, what does diversity look like in Hollywood and beyond, the answers are, no doubt, diverse. What it can look like, what our stories and storytellers could look like, is a little bit more like this:
And with this year’s Bests right around the corner, we are soon to see who the Academy will select from this year’s pool of stories as the one that arguably has its finger on the pulse of regionally mainstream tastes and priorities. There are a total of nine nominees for Best Picture 2020, ranging from a female director sharing a female perspective in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, a male sharing a male perspective in Joker, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, 1917, Ford Vs. Ferrari, The Irishman, Marriage Story, and a visible-minority male perspective in Jojo Rabbit or Parasite. Who will it be!?
UPDATE —
There you have it folks! And the Oscar goes to….Parasite! It seems the visible minority male perspective (non-english!) is the POV we are all feeling right now. And why does it all matter in the end? Bong Joon-ho confirmed it, through the words of Martin Scorsese — “The most personal is the most creative.” We all, each of us, have something personal we want to see masterfully depicted on the big screen someday. Until next year!
