Two female directors. History, yes, but also an argument for why we need wider representation, other points of view.
ON MONDAY MORNING, two women were nominated for Oscars in directing and it rained.
Perhaps someday, one of those things will not be news. (Rain in Los Angeles will always be news.) But that “someday” is not this day. The inclusion of both Chloé Zhao and Emerald Fennell in the 2020 directing (and writing) categories represents just one set of breakthroughs on a nomination list so chock full of historic firsts — “Minari’s” Steven Yeun, first Asian American lead actor nominee, meet “Sound of Metal’s” Riz Ahmed, first Muslim lead actor nominee — that Most Historic First could be its own Oscar category.
The winner of this (entirely fictional) category would no doubt be Zhao, who with
“Nomadland” became the first woman of color to be nominated for directing as well as the first to be nominated in the same year for screenwriting, editing and best picture.
Zhao, who is Chinese, is only the sixth or seventh woman nominated for directing in the 92-year history of the Oscars, and I say “sixth or seventh” because, like Zhao, Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”) was also nominated for screenwriting and best picture. She is also, to the best of my knowledge, the first director nominated for a film made while in the last trimester of pregnancy.
Don’t get me wrong. I am excited that Zhao and Fennell are on those lists, both for the representation and for the films they represent, just as I am thrilled to see Yeun and Ahmed competing in their categories.
It’s just that every “first” reminds us of the long history of “none” — and how is it possible that this is the first time in 92 years that two women have been nominated for director?
“Incremental, sustainable change” is the explanation cited by Kirsten Schaffer, executive director of Women in Film, to describe the larger cause for hope and even celebration. She is referencing gender parity but could be describing the push for general diversity that has occupied Hollywood in recent years.
In 2016, after two years of #OscarsSoWhite protests, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began an aggressive initiative to double the number of women and people of color among its members by 2020. After reaching that goal, the academy announced a new inclusion initiative; by 2024, films will need to meet at least two of four new criteria to be eligible for a best picture nod.
Since then, progress has been evident in many areas — witness last year’s sweep by “Parasite,” the first film to win both international feature and best picture. But even with the expanded academy and efforts by Women in Film and other groups, women have remained maddeningly underrepresented in many nonacting categories; it has been three years since Greta Gerwig was the lone female directing nominee, for “Lady Bird” and 11 years since Kathryn Bigelow became the only woman to win a directing Oscar, for “The Hurt Locker.”
“Incremental, sustainable change.” In other words, calm down and take the win; this year’s Oscar nominations are full of incremental change, especially for women — the documentary categories saw more female nominees than in years past — and we can only hope it is sustained.
“We’re excited to have gone in a single year from five women in a whole century to seven,” says Schaffer about nominated feature directors. “I think it points to our finally moving toward inclusion.”
For those who see the Oscars simply as a self-congratulatory event in which a big bunch of filmmakers hand out awards to a smaller bunch of filmmakers, the academy’s efforts to diversify its nominees and winners may seem like a tempest in a Champagne flute. If you are fortunate enough to work in the movie business, who cares if you get an Oscar nomination?
Well, Hollywood cares. Very deeply. Beyond the issue of fairness, the Oscars remain a powerful force in how excellence is defined. In film, and by extension, in our culture.
What stories are important enough to tell on the big screen? Whose voices are worth being heard? Whose work is interesting enough to finance? Whose lives are worth exploring ? Everyone’s. “Nomadland” and “Promising Young Woman” offer stories that have never been told in film. They both chronicle women trying to come to terms with the past, which is not unfamiliar territory, but beyond that — newly broken ground in long and differently shaped furrows.
In “Nomadland,” Fern (Frances McDormand, also nominated) attempts to move through grief literally; stripped down to essentials by personal and economic loss, she finds a new version of herself by not actively looking. The land she travels is as scoured, troubling and beautiful as her soul.
Carey Mulligan’s Cassandra has likewise been reshaped by grief, but “Promising Young Woman” is all about intent — pointed, vengeful, tragically comedic. Just as “Nomadland” evokes, in a larger sense, the country’s economic uncertainty, “Promising Young Woman” references the experiences of #MeToo and, more recently, the protests over women’s safety currently rocking Fennell’s native Britain. “The state of being a woman is not news to other women,” Fennell says. “MeToo was not news to women; it is not news to women that we are frightened walking home. It’s news to people who are not used to being afraid.”
Fennell did not make “Promising Young Woman” as an answer to #MeToo or current events; she made it to tell a story as only a movie can. On Monday, she struggled to express the honor and shock she felt: “I cannot believe I am standing in any group that includes Chloé Zhao and all the other talented women on that list. I am quite British and disapproving of emotion, but I have been absolutely weeping all morning.”
Being a first can distract from the very art form the milestone should be expanding. Fennell is thrilled that the message of her film is adding to larger conversations, but she is particularly honored to have the academy recognize the craft of her filmmaking. “It’s still a movie,” Fennell says, “and the purpose of making a movie, rather than doing a TED talk, is that you want to connect to other people, to connect in a way particular to film.”
And that is exactly what all the initiatives around inclusion are trying to increase — those points of connection. “Representation” can sound and be treated like a politically correct musthave or an HR requirement, until you really look at and think about what it means. What exactly is being represented? Points of connection between past and present, between myth and reality, between a story and its audience — between your experience and mine, however different they may appear on the surface. We tell stories to ourselves about ourselves so we can know ourselves and be known. That knowledge can be only as broad and deep as the stories that are told and as the people allowed to tell them.
There are no official firsts among the Oscars’ best picture finalists, but many are baked in. The contenders are as varied in narrative subject and form as they have ever been. Yes, there are still arguments to be had over what should or should not have been included, but the stories — in theme, form and character — cannot be dinged for lack of narrative diversity.
And narrative diversity — the quest for a deeper, broader, more wildly imaginative understanding of who we are, where we’ve been, what we could be — has been the goal all along.