Musician Anohni has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song, for “Manta Ray” from the environmental documentary Racing Extinction. While that is an incredible achievement in itself, the nomination is groundbreaking as Anohni is the first transgender Oscar nominee ever. However, she has announced she will not be attending the award show.
In an online statement released on Thursday, Anohni recounts how happy she was with her nomination at first. But when performers such as Sam Smith, Lady Gaga and The Weeknd were announced, she “slowly realized that the positive implication of this nomination was being retracted” as the producers seemed to have chosen performers “deemed commercially viable.” News outlets that had previously congratulated Anohni were now circulating the news that she had been cut from the show, while Dave Grohl, who is not a nominee, was later added to the list of performers.
Despite feelings of embarassment, Anohni still made an attempt to fly to L.A. and attend the events leading up to Sunday’s show, but her gut-feeling convinced her otherwise. “I imagined how it would feel for me to sit amongst all those Hollywood stars, some of the brave ones approaching me with sad faces and condolences,” she explains. “There I was, feeling a sting of shame that reminded me of America’s earliest affirmations of my inadequacy as a transperson.” Thus, she left the airport and returned home.
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The musician does acknowledge she was not excluded simply because she is transgender—it has more to do with the fact that she is more well-known in the UK than the U.S., and her song about ecocide will not be as relatable to the audience as some of the other songs that will be performed. However, she adds, it is not just a matter of this one event, “but a series of events that occur over years to create a system that has sought to undermine me, at first as a feminine child, and later as an androgynous transwoman. It is a system of social oppression and diminished opportunities for transpeople that has been employed by capitalism in the US to crush our dreams and our collective spirit.”
She juxtaposes her nomination and subsequent exclusion from the Oscars with her experience as a nominee for UK’s Mercury Prize, which she went on to win. “All the nominees were invited to perform that night. They lifted me from obscurity and celebrated me,” in a way the Oscars apparently refuses to do.
Anohni is not alone in her boycott of the Oscars. Some actors of color have also announced that they are boycotting the Oscars due to the lack of racial diversity among the nominees. In both cases, choosing not to attend the Oscars is so much bigger than the individual artists. It is about bringing attention to the lack of diversity in the entertainment industry and exposing the flaws within our society that allow for, as Anohni puts it, the “social oppression” of and “diminished opportunities” for people on the basis of gender, race and any other differentiating factors.