This Sunday, the 92nd annual Academy Awards will celebrate greatness in the film industry, while also touching on some interesting aspects and lingering questions about achieving cultural diversity that have been affecting Hollywood—and the larger culture as a whole—for a long time. On Jan. 13, the nominations for the Oscars were announced, reigniting discussions over the reluctance of the Academy, and the entertainment industry writ large, to recognize the work of women and people of color. Years of measures to boost the diversity of the voters within the Academy itself have yet to be reflected in recent nominees. This is in some ways indicative of measures to increase diversity within American culture as a whole, whether in educational opportunities, the workplace, breaking glass ceilings to achieve public office—and the culture of the campaigns to get there—as well as arguments about how inclusiveness should be achieved.
Yet there’s a big picture (pardon the pun) problem to all of this: How much do Americans, especially the Americans with the power to do something about it, really value diversity?
Polling indicates Americans believe diversity is important. Arguably, this is a poll question equivalent to asking whether switching to cleaner energy sources and ecological conservation is a positive. Almost everyone will agree in the abstract, but once it’s time to get into the details of how to achieve that goal? Well, that’s where the devil is. Once the question moves to how we achieve diversity and what exactly a level playing field entails, there are some differences of opinion in how far people (especially white people) will go to ensure representation of all views and voices in their lives, as well as people’s inability to recognize the limitations of their particular viewpoint. Consider the fact that about three-quarters of Americans, including three-quarters of white people, state ethnic diversity is a good thing for the country, yet just 35% of those same white people think that having an ethnically diverse school for their children is more important than keeping the integrity of their “local communities” intact.
Author Stephen King encountered pushback after he tweeted that he “would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality.” King later clarified his comments, but only after being roundly criticized for being “ignorant” and accused of displaying white male privilege; in an op-ed for The Washington Post, King explained that while he believes only the quality of art should matter, the Oscars and the system within Hollywood is still “rigged in favor of white people.” This latter sentiment was echoed by actor Joaquin Phoenix at the BAFTA awards. After picking up a win for his work in Joker, Phoenix argued the industry has issues with “systemic racism,” and that action should be taken by those who “created, and perpetuated, and benefit from a system of oppression.”
What strikes me about diversity within the Academy Awards is how it plays out like a microcosm of discriminatory problems for life in general, whether it be getting an apartment or running for president. The solutions for it are messy and not easy, and a lot of people feel like it’s something for “someone else” to fix. There are arguments over what an acknowledgment of quality should entail when entwined with cultural ideas of greatness, as well as a fundamental consideration of all aspects of merit.
The Academy has been plagued with #OscarsSoWhite criticisms for years, which are compounded by the demographic makeup of voters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Analyses done in 2012 and 2013 by the Los Angeles Times found that the roughly 6,000 Oscar voters reflected the demographics one would expect at a Trump rally or the Iowa Caucus: very male, very white, and almost old enough to draw Social Security.
After various Oscar award seasons last decade were condemned for the lack of any minority nominees in the major categories, the Academy took measures in 2016 to increase diversity within the organization itself, and among those who vote on the nominations. More than 2,000 voters have been added to the body in just the past three years. While still far from reflecting the U.S. population, women now comprise about one-third of voters, and 16% of Academy voters are people of color.
Michael Musto, writing for the Daily Beast, spoke with a “very savvy Oscar voter” on why simply changing the voter demographics doesn’t go far enough.
Anonymous Oscar Voter: When the #OscarsSoWhite backlash happened, we were all thrown under the bus by our own Academy for seemingly being biased. So they added a lot more members, making sure it was diverse. But what also came out of that was an extra fringe benefit of youth. Suddenly an entire group of voters was plugged into social media in a way the older voters were not. So now comes this year, where the grumblings are happening again, but this time it’s harder to throw the Academy members under the bus because we are more diverse now. I think it points to what the other issue was that got buried under the controversy, and that is the need to develop more projects that are richer in roles for actors of color and even stronger directing opportunities for women.
When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, there was much commentary about how the Academy still ended up with just one person of color—Best Actress nominee Cynthia Erivo for her role as Harriet Tubman—across 20 acting nominee spots, in a year where many actors of color were critically lauded for their work, and the number of people of color and women in major roles in major films is rising.
The Best Director category is comprised of five men in a year of notable offerings from women directors (e.g., Greta Gerwig’s Little Women), an omission that was pointed out with full shade by actress Issa Rae on live television while announcing the nominees.
Dana Stevens, writing for Slate, commented on what a men-only directing category means to women in the industry, and the message to society.
2019 was a year in which the number of mainstream films made by women started to reach critical mass: Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers, Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet, Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, Claire Denis’ High Life, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Mati Diop’s Atlantics were all either well-reviewed, successful at the box office, or both, and several of them were recognized in Monday morning’s nominations in categories other than directing. To respond to a year like that with the studious exclusion of anyone female from the award that above all others confers authorship and authority, the one that attributes a film’s success to the unifying vision of an individual, starts to look like nothing else but rank condescending sexism.
One problem with the way the Academy has approached the issue of representation is the fostering of tokenism and the idea of giving someone or some group “their due” and then moving on, as though the root of the problems has been solved. It’s the same sort of mentality which was present among some parts of the white population after President Obama’s victory in 2008, where, to some, electing a black president was held up as proof that race relations in the United States had been solved for all time, and that we were in a new “post-racial” America.
Basically, it’s a societal/cultural version of the “But I have a black friend!” defense.
Oscar voters tend to engage in tokenism by recognizing a person’s career over the individually nominated performance, voting for a film because it distinguishes a worthy cause or brings attention to a social ill, and checking off the boxes of each minority group because it’s “their time.” So the Academy will pat itself on the back for honoring people of color and women at different points in its history, whether it be notable wins for black actors like Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Mahershala Ali, gritty films like 12 Years a Slave or Moonlight, or even nominating a wave of people of color in one particular year. But in time, everything reverts to normal patterns, because the voters and institution feel that they’ve checked off those boxes—boxes that shouldn’t even exist. The industry gets to point to those individual nods and award winners as proof there’s not a problem, without delving deeper into discriminatory decisions in financing projects, limited opportunities, and generalizations about roles and functions based on factors of race and sex within the industry. They don’t question why, out of all the roles they can honor African Americans for in film, with critically-acclaimed actors in a wide range of roles, the examples the Academy has honored tend to be problematic, with Washington finally taking home a statue only after being a villain and portraying a “gangster cop” in Training Day.
The result? And hours-long awards show honoring a bunch of very good movies overwhelmingly about straight white men, made by white men.
Wesley Morris, writing for The New York Times, commented on how gender and race are handled among the Best Picture nominees, and the unfortunate implications.
Eight of the nine [Best Picture] movies (minus “Parasite”) are about white people — and, excusing “Little Women,” and Scarlett Johansson in “Marriage Story” notwithstanding, about white men. “Little Women” is the lone nominee that a woman directed … Whiteness is part of that story. It’s always been, of course. But this year feels different. A homogeneity has set in. The nominated movies start to look like picture day at certain magnet schools. “Jojo Rabbit” is a Hitler Youth comedy! Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time …” is a dream about the accidentally heroic pre-emption of racist Charles Manson’s murder plot. And “Little Women” quietly dramatizes the freedom white women experience after the men have left to fight a war; a war to end the enslavement of black people. Sounds a little too ironic, and yet the movie means us to understand the irony. Those white ladies are better off than any black people. They’re just not equal to the women’s enlisted brothers, fathers and beaus. The border between their time and ours has a gusty permeability.
That we live in a country that prioritizes the lives of white guys shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. But what can be eye-opening is how deeply this thread runs, and how reflective it is of other aspects of life. Anyone looking at this and saying: “What the fuck, Hollywood?” could just as easily apply the Academy’s biases to how we judge almost anyone for anything, whether it be an application to be a manager at Walmart or running for president.
The problem of privilege is the belief in a baseline default of white and male, and everyone else who deviates from that default is forced to walk a very narrow balance when it comes to public perceptions. Show too much strength and get called a bitch or uppity, or act too nice and be regarded as weak. People start talking about the right ways to talk and laugh—with no way to please the judges of proper enunciation and chuckling—or deem the style of a woman’s hair as being more important than the substance of the words coming out of her mouth. In other words, there is no way to please the critics or win. There will always be an excuse for why those outside of the default didn’t quite measure up. Those excuses will sound reasonable, and exist in the ambiguity of subjective judgment. But on some level, the biases which inform those judgments are tainted by societal and personal prejudices that discriminate against anything outside the norm.
Most people will say bias is wrong, whether in politics or art, but again, they think of it as something others hold instead of considering that their own biases might be a part of it. People may like a woman candidate, but discount her worth for any number of arbitrary reasons when considering their vote, whether in judging a woman’s capabilities or her chances. Is there a similarity to how many in Hollywood would never think of themselves as biased, but somehow end up overlooking the work of African Americans and women? On some level, do African Americans and women in Hollywood get looked over by people who would never consider themselves racist or sexist because of the benevolent discrimination of doubt? How many women voters in this country discount women candidates because they don’t believe a woman can beat Donald Trump?
Lisa Lerer, in The New York Times, talked with women caucus-goers in Iowa and found many had their doubts about nominating a woman.
Becky Kakac, 68, said she would like to see a woman president in her lifetime and would love to support a female candidate — just not now.
“I’m not sure this is our year. We have to win the country …,” Ms. Kakac said. “That was one of the problems with the Hillary candidacy, thinking that a woman president would be elected after our first African-American president. That was a little too much to ask.”
Diversity is not something that happens passively. It’s a long struggle which takes a hard look in the mirror and some honest choices.
There’s a great scene in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia where a judge spouts the equality of justice within a courtroom, only to be reminded that “we don’t live in this courtroom though, do we?” We live in the really real world with racism, misogyny, and homophobia, and those monsters don’t always wear hoods over their heads, nor are they so easy to spot. Sometimes these darker aspects of the human psyche are buried down deep in our very own hearts and rear their ugly heads as thoughts and attitudes. They are the voices that push down hopes, fill the soul with doubt, and put aspirations in cages. And sometimes those demons of doubt are so insidious they affect their own victims with fear.
When even women doubt the ability of other women to succeed, when people of color are just waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under their opportunities, or think of their dreams as long shots, it’s proof of how this problem affects the individual and expresses itself in wide-ranging areas of our society, from film to the White House. This is an issue where the end result is a clipped soul. This taints how we view the world around us.
But the pity of this problem? People will always agree it’s a problem. People will nod their heads sympathetically. People will argue about what can be done. And then, left to “someone else” to fix, it all happens again. Just look at the Oscars.