On Tuesday morning, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for this year’s Oscars, which will be held on Sunday, Feb. 24.

The Academy, following the #OscarsSoWhite controversy of 2015, has gotten much better at diversifying their nominees. In the Best Picture category, the night’s biggest award, the academy has nominated “Black Panther,” “BlacKkKlansman,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Green Book” and “Roma,” all of which feature people of color in lead roles (Rami Malek of “Bohemian Rhapsody” is of Egyptian descent).

Each category that honors individuals — Best Actor and Actress in both a Leading and Supporting Role, along with Best Director — has at least one person of color nominated. The Academy has obviously been conscious of their past exclusion and has aimed to be more inclusive. As a result, some selections were pleasantly surprising following the Golden Globes, particularly Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira of “Roma.”

Unfortunately, outside of their designated categories, there is, as usual, a disheartening lack of women.
Last year, amid the rising cultural significance of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, the Oscars were centered around women’s empowerment. They seemed to make Greta Gerwig, the only nominated woman director, their poster child for women’s empowerment and inclusivity.

The academy appeared to be making progress in giving women more of a voice. Prior to the #MeToo movement, women directors had only been nominated four times. While last year there was more female representation, this year’s nominations have taken a step back, including fewer women, particularly women of color.

While I won’t personally argue that they were all Oscar worthy, there certainly is, and has been, a case to be made for nominating Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here,” and Josephine Decker’s “Madeline’s Madeline,” for awards this year. Both were definitely more arthouse than the nominated films directed by men, but that shouldn’t discount their quality. They are both well-made, experimental films that do new and exciting things with the aging film medium.

That said, often women only have the opportunity to work within more arthouse and low-budget area of the greater industry, and aren’t typically given the chance to direct bigger budget, blockbuster films.
Notably, many of the films nominated for Best Picture fall under this latter category. Almost every single one — excluding “Roma,” which garnered exposure through a Netflix release — had a widely-released, theatrical run. As for Best Director, Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” is the only film that had a relatively limited release. Both “Roma” and “Cold War” are foreign films, which speaks to this same issue of the lack of opportunities Hollywood is willing to give minorities.

I believe awards season should be more devoted to granting exposure to critically-acclaimed, small-budget films, rather than the big-budget studio films that have already made millions of dollars. That’s not to say these latter films are bad for having made money, but I don’t believe they really need the added exposure and acclaim that awards season grants them.

This is a surefire way to naturally incorporate a more diverse array of films, filmmakers, and actors — diverse in gender, race, sexuality and more — without having it come off as self-conscious and hollow, as it seems to be every time the Academy tries to be inclusive on its own limiting terms.

Published on January 22, 2019 at 10:53 pm