POP CULTURE REWIND
AWARD SEASON It’s that time of year again! Award season! Finally, a chance to celebrate the success and talent of a variety of talented actors and filmmakers. Or so we thought… For years, arguments have been made that such awards only represent a select few in the industry, that being, established rich straight white men. As the years go by, the glamour of this season has started to peel back revealing the biases that exist behind the voting panels and processes. As a new decade begins with the 92nd Academy Awards taking place in February, let’s take a trip down memory lane and discuss some of the biggest issues and controversies these esteemed events have become known for and how they weigh up today. One of the biggest and most obvious criticisms award shows receive is the lack of diversity in their voting panel, nominees and winners. In 2012, the Los Angeles Times conducted a study revealing that 94% of Academy Award Voters were white and 76% were men. In 2016, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite trended online as a response to it being the second consecutive year where four out of five nominated directors and all twenty acting nominees were white. This was amongst only two people of colour winning any award throughout the night. Responding to this criticism, the Academy vowed to double the diversity of Academy voters including more people of colour and women by 2020. Statistically, they have somewhat been able to reach this goal, but the percentages are still astoundingly low. As of 2019, 32% of Academy members are women and 16% are people of colour, improving from the 25% of women and 8% of people of colour from 2015. Though, their still clear minority-status is easily reflected in this year’s nominees.
For example, from the 2020 Academy Awards, only two acting nominees and one director nominee were people of colour. This year’s BAFTAs nominations share a similar story with not a single person of colour being nominated across the four acting categories. In fact, Scarlett Johanson was nominated twice in both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories (as in the Oscars), alongside Margot Robbie being nominated twice within the same category itself. Regardless, actors such as Awkwafina, Jennifer Lopez, Eddie Murphy and Jamie Foxx were able to get some recognition through nominations at the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards. Lupita Nyong’o was particularly noticed for being snubbed by the majority of award shows this season, despite being named the best actress of the year for her role in Jordan Peele’s Us by a variety of film associations including the New York Film Critics Circle and the Toronto Film Critics Association. 2020 also marked yet another year of no women being nominated for best director for an Oscar, Golden Globe or BAFTA. Over the 92 years over which the Academy Awards has run, only five female directors have been nominated with only one woman, Kathryn Bigelow, taking home the prize in 2010. Alongside this, only thirteen female directed films have ever been nominated for Best Picture. While many have critiqued that perhaps the issue is women not making as many good films, this can easily be argued through successful directors such as Greta Gerwig, Lulu Wang, Alma Har’el, Marielle Heller, Olivia Wilde, Lorene Scafaria and plenty of other women having all directed critically acclaimed films in the past year that have received universal praise. International titles have also strongly been disregarded by the Academy and other Western award shows over the years. The category of Best Foreign Language film seemed specifically created to spotlight films that would most likely be snubbed by other categories by disinterested old Academy members. 2020 marks Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite as only the sixth time that a film has been nominated as both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film. Bong couldn’t be more accurate when he describes the Oscars as a “local event” while he asserts that Americans should be more open to reading subtitles when watching international films.
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