Advancing the Academy
Staffer discusses diversity of the Oscar nominations, questions representation in Hollywood our years after the #OscarsSoWhite movement brought attention to the lack of racial diversity at the Academy Awards, the Academy announced their nominations for the 2020 Oscars to swift backlash against an all-male nominee directing category. However, it’s Hollywood that is the one with a representation
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problem, not t h e Academy. This leaves the Academy little room for highlighting diversity, yet they’re often too busy fumbling over themselves and rewarding mediocrity regardless of race or gender to begin with. Before we get to the Oscars specifically, it’s
important to look at female representation in Hollywood as a whole. According to the 2019 Celluloid Ceiling Report, women made up a mere 14 percent of directors working on the top 500 domestic grossing films in 2019. While it’s unreasonable for statistics like these to directly mirror the makeup of our population, the reality is that 14 percent is drastically low given that
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February 2020 - Opinions
over half of the United States is female. This number also needs to be taken within the context of the fairly recent Harvey Weinstein #MeToo revelations that show Hollywood is no stranger to being systematically sexist. With few opportunities behind the camera, female directors have a statistically smaller chance at achieving breakout success both critically and commercially, which in turn makes it harder for the Academy to consistently recognize a female director as one of the five best of the year. The Academy’s job isn’t to fulfill a diversity quota, but rather to look at the hand Hollywood has dealt them and pick what they think are the year’s best movies, which can result in different demographics for nominees each year. However, the Academy often makes baffling choices for nominees of any color or gender. When somebody like Lulu Wang isn’t nominated, how are we supposed to know whether the Oscars are being exclusionary or just simply picking the wrong movies? This year was full of snubs ranging from Willem Dafoe to Lupita Nyong’o, and this only continues the trend of the Oscars recognizing movies that we’ll forget about weeks after the ceremony as opposed to more unconvention-
al, qualified picks. When it comes to this year’s director category, I and many others would have put numerous filmmakers both male and female over the likes of Todd Phillips, making it hard to distinguish between when the Academy is racist, sexist or simply inept. P r o g - ress in representation is an admirable goal, as is recognizing quality work. When it comes to Hollywood and the Oscars, both need to get better at their respective job so that we can get the best movies possible and recognize them as such, with a person’s race or gender hopefully one day becoming irrelevant as to who gets to sit behind a camera and yell “action!” or claim a statuette.
WRITTEN BY: BEN BOWLER DESIGNED BY: SAILAJA NALLACHERUVU
