Academy changes raise hopes for a more diverse Oscars future
Directors may be the key to bringing forward more options
Box office aside, for Hollywood, this was a blockbuster week.
On Wednesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it had invited a record 683 filmmakers, actors and craftsmen to join the organization.
It was the largest, most diverse class ever invited by the academy: 46% were women and 41% were minorities. If all accept, the percentage of female members and members of color will rise to 27% (up 2%) and 11% (up 3%).
The induction earned a cheer from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “The progress that is being made by AMPAS is certainly going in a very positive direction with more that can be done,” Roslyn M. Brock, chairman of the NAACP national board of directors, said in a statement. “The NAACP continues to believe that the “O” in Oscar should stand for Opportunity.”
While the move was historic, it’s unclear whether the shift will be sizable enough to avoid an #OscarsSoWhite threepeat.
Though new faces abound in the actors branch, changes may be most acutely felt in directing.
Just 35 women had been among the 395 directors, but the academy added 53 women, more than doubling female representation, according to figures confirmed by the academy. (Thirty-nine male directors also were added.)
Melissa Silverstein, founder and publisher of the website Women and Hollywood, calls the branch overhaul a deliberate move by the academy to catch up. “Only four women in the history of the academy have been nominated for best director,” Silverstein says. (Kathryn Bigelow is the only one who won, for 2008’s
The Hurt Locker.) “People don’t get how this filters down into the whole industry.”
How could this affect the Oscar race? Director Karyn Kusama ( Girlfight, The Invitation), one of the new inductees, notes how much of nominations consideration comes down to opportunity. Most women and minority directors find work in independent films, which have a harder time securing the kind of financing that affords Oscar campaigns.
“That’s where I’m hopeful that my individual voice could matter,” she says. “Because I’d hope to be calling attention to a great film that maybe just doesn’t have the resources to get in front of every single member.”
Still, there’s a long way to go. Even this historic class “barely makes a dent” in the overall membership, awards columnist Scott Feinberg noted in The
Hollywood Reporter. “Ultimately, we still come back to the same problem: the tail does not wag the dog. The academy, try as it might, cannot change the industry,” he wrote. “The industry from which the academy chooses its members, nominees and winners, still needs to provide it with a greater variety of worthy options.”
Hammond acknowledges that the academy will face “a real media problem” if a whiteout occurs a third time, particularly with awards-bait films on the horizon such as Nate Parker’s The
Birth of A Nation and Cannes Film Festival hit Loving.
But ultimately, he says, the academy has no control over how its members vote. “It’s not done by committee,” Hammond says. “When it comes time to choose, it’s an individual vote like a presidential election.”