the academy awards have a serious diversity problem

The nominations for the 87^th Academy Awards came out last week. Amongst the deserving successes for films like Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Boyhood, there is a certain noticeable pattern emerging from the nominees in the major categories.

For the first time in almost 20 years every single person nominated in the acting categories is white and – with the exception of French actress Marion Cotillard – is either American or British. (There hasn’t been an all-white nominee list since 1998, and that was the year when the Academy was obviously smoking something funny for giving Shakespeare in Love Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan.) On top of that, all the nominees in the directing and screenwriting categories are male, leaving female artists like Selma’s director Ava DuVernay and Gone Girl’s author/screenwriter Gillian Flynn out of the Oscar race. Furthermore, every film nominated for Best Picture has a male lead, with female-led films like Gone Girl, Into the Woods and Wild failing to gain Best Picture nods over more macho films, like Clint Eastwood’s racism-disguised-as-patriotism movie, American Sniper. The lack of diversity in this year’s nominations has left everyone – understandably – very angry and very confused.

You can argue that the Oscars don’t really matter, and in the grand scheme of things, they don’t. But much of what we consume culturally finds itself reflected in our every day lives. The Academy Awards are the biggest and most acclaimed of all the award ceremonies, and have a lasting impact on the careers of winning actors and filmmakers. They have the power to change social issues and to promote artists who strive to make a difference in their work.

Last year, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave was the big winner of the awards season, taking home the statue for Best Picture, along with awards for acting, screenwriting and nominations in technical categories. It seemed like the Academy had finally changed their attitude and wanted to reward important films about social issues.

But this year’s nominations seem to undo all the Academy’s good work from past years, though audience reactions tell a different story. The general population was very aware of the lack of gender and racial diversity in the nominations, leading to the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, which quickly gained momentum on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

People were quick to point out that although all the nominees are deserving in their own right, there were performances as equally impressive and powerful performances from people of colour (POC). Overlooked performances from David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo in Selma, Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Belle and Tony Revoli in The Grand Budapest Hotel show that although a movie may be praised and critically acclaimed, that doesn’t necessarily mean that POC will be rewarded.

Over the last decade we have seen many actresses of colour like Lupita Nyong’o, Jennifer Hudson, Halle Berry, Mo’Nique and Octavia Spencer celebrate their well-deserved wins. In 2009, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman (finally!) to win Best Director for her film The Hurt Locker. These wins are important, but there is still a shocking gap in how many women and POC are awarded for their hard work.

Maybe all this isn’t as shocking when you discover whom actually votes for the Academy Awards. There are more than 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and a whopping 94% of them are white. Furthermore, 77% of them are men and their average age is 63.

There is hope, however, for change in the Academy. In June 2013, Cheryl Boone Isaacs became the first African-American female president of the Academy. She hopes that diversity of nominees will improve, stating the day after the nominations came out, ‘We are very active about increasing diversity throughout the Academy, and recognition of talent, and it will increase.’

The biggest victim of the Academy’s lack of diversity has been the film Selma, a moving biopic about Martin Luther King Jr’s fight to bring the Civil Rights movement to the deeply prejudiced south. It follows the 1965 organisation of a march by Civil Rights activists to the city of Selma, Alabama. The film is directed by Ava DuVernay and produced by Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B.

Since the release of Selma in the US, DuVernay has received praise from both filmgoers and critics alike for her brave and impeccable directing. Furthermore, she became the first woman of colour to ever be nominated for Best Director at the Golden Globes.

Yet the film only gained two Oscar nominations – for Best Picture and Best Original Song. DuVernay’s position in the Oscar’s Best Director category was replaced by Bennet Miller, whose film Foxcatcher isn’t even nominated for Best Picture, and the guy who directed The Imitation Game, a movie in which the directing is by far the least exciting/interesting thing about it.

As a woman in an industry run in favour of men, and a black person in the very white-centric Hollywood, Ava DuVernay’s future after Selma is uncertain without the opportunities the awards season usually brings. Without a Best Director nomination, Selma’s chances of going home with the grand prize are very slim (although, famously, Argo won Best Picture in 2012 without director Ben Affleck being nominated). But the real question is, will the anger and backlash towards Selma’s multiple snubs put a dint in the Academy’s reputation, and more importantly, like Cheryl Boone Isaacs said, “increase diversity throughout the Academy”?

 

[Artwork (c) Jade Bate]