It’s about time The Oscars are moving away from #OscarsSoWhite. The Academy’s excuse for the lack of nonwhite nominees last year was calked up to there not being many options (even though there was Straight Outta Compton, Beasts of No Nation, Chi-Raq, and Creed *cough, cough*). There seems to be a change in this year’s nominees.
The film industry has given The Academy a plethora of options this year for nonwhite nominees. Moonlight, Hidden Figures, Lion, The 13th and Fences dominated the box office and the actors and actresses killed it in their performances.
Something that was missing from the list of Oscar Nominees: women directors and women screenwriters. It has us asking: where them girls at?
The lack of women directors and writers has been apparent year after year when the Oscar nominations come out. Aside from the Supporting Actress and Actress categories, there’s an overall lack of women on the list.
Here are some facts that should have you outraged: in 86 years, only FOUR women have been nominated for a Best Director Oscar. All four have been white women. Only ONE has won: Kathryn Bigelow. A female director has not been nominated in the SEVEN years since Bigelow won. In the years between 2005-2014, only 18 women screenwriters were nominated out of the 160 screenwriters nominated. Only one female was nominated for the screenplay categories this year: Allison Schroeder, Hidden Figures for Adapted Screenplay. ONE woman has won for Best Original or Adapted Screenplay in the past ten years: Diablo Cody, Juno.
Lack of representation has been an ongoing issue in Hollywood for decades. The Academy was called out last year for the lack of nonwhite nominees, thus coining the #OscarsSoWhite. While men and women of color have had less representation over the years, women have also not been represented in some categories. Ava DuVernay is familiar with this. Her film, Selma made her the first black female director to have their film nominated for the Academy Award Best Pictures. However, she was not nominated for Best Director that year. She would have been the first female of color to be nominated. This year, one of DuVernay’s films is nominated again. This time it’s for Best Documentary Feature for her film The 13th.
We can hastag all we want about the issue, but we can’t full blame The Academy for the lack of women directors and writers. A recent study by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film found that women directed only 7% of the top 250 grossing films in 2016. The issue here is Hollywood, and the lack of opportunities for anyone who isn’t a white male.
This is not to take away from the nonwhite nominees this year. We did have some major breakthroughs this year:
- Six black actors were nominated (which is a new record)
- Nine films and documentaries with nonwhite subjects were nominated
- This was the first year in which black actors were nominated in every acting category
- Viola Davis set a new record for number of nominations for a black, female actor
- Joi McMillon became the first black woman to be nominated in the editing category for her work on Moonlight
- Three non-white writers nominated for best screenplay in the same year for the first time
- Dev Patel became the first Indian actor to be nominated in 13 years for his work in Lion
- Barry Jenkins is the fourth black director to be nominated in the category of Best Director and could become the first to win
- He’s also the first black artist to be nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay
- No film created by a black woman has ever won in the Best Documentary category. Ava DuVernay has a chance to break that record with The 13th.
It smells like change is in the air, but we still need to push for more to come. As April Reign, the activist who created #OscarsSoWhite tweeted: “one year of films reflecting the Black experience doesn’t make up for 80 (years) of underrepresentation of ALL groups.”
Let’s hope Hollywood continues to move forward in representing ALL groups.
Sources:
http://www.vocativ.com/culture/tvmovies/meryls-right-hollywood-needs-female-screenwriters/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/oscars-no-women-nominated-best-director-again-967284
http://time.com/4645315/oscar-nominations-2017-diversity/