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#OscarsSoWhite (and male) looks headed for a sequel
For some it’s the “white male rage” Oscars. Others have dubbed it the year of “Big Men, Little Women.” Despite four years of efforts to address the #OscarsSoWhite furor, the winners’ podium at Sunday’s Academy Awards is expected to be made up entirely of white actors and no female directors.
Of the nine best picture nominees at this year’s Oscars, just one - “Little Women” - is a story about and made by women, while just one of the 20 acting nominees is a person of color: “Harriet” star Cynthia Erivo. Neither is expected to take home the biggest honors in the movie industry.
“The whole Hollywood system can sometimes feel like a bit of a boys’ club,” said Taika Waititi, director of Oscarnominated Nazi satire “Jojo Rabbit.”
It’s been 10 years since Kathryn Bigelow became the first and so far only woman to win a best director Academy Award, for her war film “The Hurt Locker.” This year, “Little Women”s Greta Gerwig was the biggest omission in the director race.
Despite a banner 2019 in which women made up 21 percent of all directors, writers, producers and cinematographers on the top 250 grossing films, including “Captain Marvel” and “Frozen II,” those gains largely failed to translate into honors at awards season.
“As a culture, we still value stories about men more than we value stories about women, and if there is a healthy dose of violence in those movies, even better,” said Martha Lauzen, founder of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
“On the one hand, of course these awards are frivolous and seem silly at times, but the fact is they translate into visibility, and visibility translates into opportunities and higher salaries,” she said.
Since 2016, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose members choose the Oscar winners, has doubled the number of women and people of color in its invitation-only ranks. Yet, by 2019 just 32% of its approximately 8,000 members were women, and 16% were people of color.
EXPAND BEST DIRECTOR SLOTS
Lauzen, who has been chronicling the presence of women on screen and behind the camera for 22 years, has one suggestion that could improve matters more quickly than waiting for the academy to catch up.
“Expanding the best director category to include more spaces strikes me as an elegant, simple and transparent way to make room for others,” Lauzen said.
There are currently just five slots in the best director field but up to 10 movies can be nominated for the top prize of best picture.
“The academy could do a lot to help,” said Olivia Wilde, director of high school comedy “Booksmart,” which was snubbed.
“When they nominate a movie for best picture but not the director, it begs the question ‘Are they discounting the amount of effort and dedication and thought that went into that?,’” she said.
The academy noted that a record 62 women got Oscar nominations this year, almost one-third of the field, including a screenplay nod for Gerwig, an editing nomination for Thelma Schoonmaker for “The Irishman,” and an original score nod for Hildur Guonadottir for “Joker.”
Sam Mendes, the Oscarnominated director of best picture front-runner “1917,” said there was “an enormous number of talented female directors coming through.”
“I just think it’s a process and it is taking a long time. Some years it is good and some years, like this year, it has been a fallow and frustrating year,” Mendes added.