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Photographed by Chidinma Onukwuru (12-3)
The Academy Awards have always been a cultural phenomenon in Hollywood, and in the country as a whole. Every year, we sit back and watch the broadcast of the film industry’s biggest actors and crew members as they are awarded the infamous golden statues we informally know as “Oscars” for achievements in acting, directing, and numerous other aspects that go into filmmaking. Personally, I love watching the Oscars yearly; the viewing of the ceremony serves as an unspoken tradition in my family.
But the event does not come without controversy. In recent years, the Academy has been criticised for their overwhelming recognition of white actors, directors, editors, and crew members in favor of their minority counterparts. In the ceremonies taking place back to back, in 2015 and 2016, not a single actor or actress of color was nominated for the four main acting categories (Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress). This fueled the infamous #OscarSoWhite controversy on social media, which was based on the collective desire for racial diversity in the film industry. Numerous celebrities, including Spike Lee and Jada Pickett-Smith, boycotted the awards, opting to not attend the 2016 ceremony.
Since then, there have been strides made in terms of recognizing and celebrating creatives of color. In 2017, during a very memorable reveal, Moonlight was awarded Best Picture, with Mahershala Ali winning Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film. The following year, the acclaimed Marvel film Black Panther was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and won three.
This year’s Oscars has built upon this streak. The South Korean film Parasite, which swept in previous award ceremonies and received the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, won 4 Academy Awards at Sunday’s ceremony, including Best Picture. It became the first non-English language film in Academy history to win Best Picture, and it also won Bong Joon-ho the award for Best Director. In addition to Parasite’s historic wins, Hair Love, a short film about a black man doing his young daughter’s hair for the first time, won the award for Best Animated Short Film. Taika Waititi was the first person of Maori descent to be nominated for and win a screenplay award for his adapted screenplay for the film Jojo Rabbit. But, we aren’t completely there just yet.
For the past two years, there hasn’t been a female nominee in the Directing category. In fact, only five women have ever been nominated for the award throughout the Academy Awards’ 92 years in existence; Kathryn Bigelow became the first and only female winner for her work on 2009’s The Hurt Locker. After introducing the nominated directors during the Academy’s official nominee announcement, Issa Rae memorably quipped, “Congratulations to all those men.” Many were expecting nominations for Greta Gerwig (for Little Women) and Lulu Wang, whose film The Farewell won Best Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards, among other directors.Bottom line: It’s 2020, and there is an unlimited number of stories from a diverse range of storytellers. We shouldn’t still be honoring the same type of people (mainly: white men) with the same awards when there are underrepresented groups whose stories, in many cases, are rarely heard from. As we progress forward in the entertainment industry, I hope to see a much wider, more diverse pool of nominees and winners at the Academy Awards.
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