This year’s Oscar field already historic one for women
When the Oscar nominations were announced earlier this week, a small number was the source of some very big news.
The number was two, and it represented a historic step forward for women in Hollywood. For the first time in the Academy Awards’ 92-year history, more than one woman was nominated in the best director category. And the groundbreaking nominations for Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”) bring the grand total of all female-director nominees all the way up to … Seven.
Seven nominees in 92 years should not be cause for celebration. But after more than two decades of tracking women’s employment in film, San Diego State University professor Martha Lauzen will take the win.
“If you stop and think about it, it’s crazy,” said Lauzen, who is the director
of SDSU’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. “But it’s tremendous that Chloé Zhao and Emerald Fennell have been nominated for that very prestigious award. Only a handful of women have experienced
this, and as a result, they will become household names and their films will be widely known and assumed to be of high quality.
“That is what an Oscar nomination
does for you and your reputation and your career. Traditionally, that has been an honor that has only been available to men. White men, in particular. So it is terrific that they were both nominated.”
In fact, it is terrific that Zhao and Fennell are directing at all. Or working, really.
Lauzen has been reporting on women’s employment in the film industry since 1998, when the center released its first “Celluloid Ceiling ” study. And what 23 years of number-crunching reveals is that Hollywood’s celluloid ceiling might as well be made of tungsten. Despite the advocacy and inclusion efforts of organizations like the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, Hollywomen and USC’s Annenberg Inclusion
Initiative, Hollywood’s gender balance is almost as lopsided as ever.
Since 1998, the percentage of women’s employment as directors on the 250 top domestic grossing films has increased from 9 percent to 18 percent. Even more sobering, the percentage of women working in such behind-the-scenes roles as writers, producers, editors and cinematographers has inched up by just 6 percent in 23 years, from 17 percent in 1998 to 23 percent in 2020.
“People like to work with other people who look like them. They are most comfortable with people who look like them. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation,” Lauzen said.
“The pictures in our heads are incredibly powerful in terms of who gets hired. When you think about what a cinematographer looks like, you think of a middle-aged or older White
guy. These images are very powerful. I know women who have walked into a room, and they don’t fit the demographic description of what people in these roles look like, so they don’t get hired.”
But there are signs that the idea of who gets to do what in Hollywood is changing. It’s not happening quickly or expansively, but it is happening.
After the #OscarsSoWhite controversies of 2015 and 2016, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doubled the number of female members and nearly tripled the number of members from racial and ethnic minorities. The academy has also expanded the number of international members. That is probably why this year’s Oscar nominations set a record for diversity.
Three of the five bestactor nominees (Steven Yeun, Riz Ahmed and the late Chadwick Boseman) are not White. Two of the best-actress nominees (Viola Davis and San Diego’s Andra Day) are Black, as are three of the supporting nominees (Daniel Kaluuya, Leslie Odom Jr. and LaKeith Stanfield). The “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” team of Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson were the first Black women nominated for best make-up and hairstyling, and “Judas and the Black Messiah” was the first film with an allBlack producing team to be nominated for best picture.
Meanwhile, the SDSU center’s most-recent reports on the employment of women found that between 2019 and 2020, the percentage of women working as directors and writers on independent films reached historic highs. There were also historic gains for women working in behind-the-scenes jobs in television.
From academics and journalists to the hashtag warriors on social media, people are not just watching movies and TV shows. They are watching the people who make them. And when they don’t see progress happening, they speak up. And the industry can’t afford to tune them out.
Not anymore. “People in the industry know that their choices are being evaluated by multiple organizations and by the larger society. It is all about pressure. Any backsliding will be noted, and the studios will hear about it,” Lauzen said. “I think that is healthier for everyone. It is healthier for our culture and healthier for our employment to have a more diverse behind-the-scenes community. It’s a good thing.”