Academy Continues To Snub Nominees Of Color
The pioneer revenge movie “The Revenant” emerged as the Oscar front-runner on Thursday with 12 nominations but the big news once again was over how the Academy shut out actors of color from the industry’s biggest honors.
For yet another year the Academy’s picks seem to be getting more and more homogenized. As the nominations were announced, people noticed that all 20 contenders for acting awards were white and that films with black themes had been left out of the best picture category, critics and movie goers began asking how the movie industry’s top awards could exclude so many great showings from people of color a second year in a row.
While Jennifer Lawrence walked off with the fourth nomination of her career for her role in “Joy,” a film with mixed reviews, Will Smith’s celebrated performance in “Concussion” received nothing. The only actor nominated for “Creed” was somehow not lead Michael B. Jordan but Sylvester Stallone, and “Dope,” brilliantly written by Rick Famuyiwa and starring Shameik Moore, was snubbed completely. “Tangerine,” a film shot entirely on an iPhone (which this writer feels that alone should have been enough to snag a best cinematography nomination for Sean Baker and Radium Cheung) was also notably absent from the nominations list, along with the breakthrough performances by Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez going unrecognized by the Academy.
Yes, we saw a few movies driven by actors and directors of color that were nominated by the Academy, but it was for the work of their white colleagues.
“For the two black movies that made over $100 million at the box office, touched a nerve and are artistically fresh, only white people were nominated. How does that work?” producer and academy member Stephanie Allain said to the Los Angeles Times; referring to “Creed” and “Compton.”
Sylvester Stallone was nominated for supporting actor for his performance in Warner Bros.’ “Creed,” but the film’s black writer-director, Ryan Coogler, and black star, Michael B. Jordan, were not. Similarly, “Straight Outta Compton’s” white writers Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff were nominated for best original screenplay, but no one else in the film was recognized.
Last year, the Academy also received a lot of backlash after it selected an all-white group of acting nominees for the first time in years. The group’s acting branch, which chooses the nominees in those categories, did not recognize David Oyelowo, who gave what many thought was the best performance of the year as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in “Selma.” The film also failed to make the cut on the director list, spurring the social-media movement #OscarsSoWhite. With the same thing happening again this year, the hashtag was revived on social media and the new hashtag #OscarsStillSoWhite also emerged after the announcements
Last year the academy responded with a pledge to do better, but while last year’s controversy was mainly over one film being omitted (and the exclusion could have been explained away by campaign-specific factors), things feel different this time around. Academy members this year had a strong pool of movies to draw from and still ended up with an all-white ballot.
In June, the academy invited 322 new members, a large and demographically broad group that reflected a move toward “a normalization of our membership to represent both the industry and the country as a whole,” academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said at the time. In November, Boone Isaacs also announced a new initiative, A2020, designed to promote inclusion within its staff.
Even though the academy’s leadership is taking steps at inclusion, the voting members as a whole have proved slow to change. But, when it comes to diversity, the film world in general is dragging behind television. Last year, a record 18 black performers were nominated for Emmy Awards and this year’s Oscar snubs become even more upsetting coming as they do on the heels of the Golden Globes, which managed to nominate a diverse mix of actors, writers, and directors in both television and film.
The Academy needs to decide what the Oscars are all about—if the awards are meant to celebrate the best, most innovative work in the industry then it needs to widen its scope as TV has done.
“On every measure, film is a couple steps behind TV,” said Darnell Hunt, director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “This is, unfortunately, a reflection of the academy itself. The academy is white and male, so we have a taste culture that’s only going to recognize certain types of projects.”
The demographics of the academy aren’t likely to change anytime soon as the 6,261 Oscar voters serve for life, so even large new classes of voters would only move the needle slightly and it’s hard to give the academy a pass because “film drags behind TV,” when you consider other industry nominations. Both the Screen Actors and Producers guilds nominated “Straight Outta Compton” for their top prizes, and SAG also nominated the Idris Elba film, “Beasts of No Nation,” for its cast and Elba for supporting actor. When you compare the picks by the major industry unions to the academy the whiteness of their choices this year become even more notable.
However, for all the outrage over the acting nominations, the omission of minority actors two years in a row is an aberration in recent Academy history. The last time there were only white acting nominees for two consecutive years was in 1997 and 1998.
Just two years ago the same Academy awarded best picture to “12 Years a Slave” and voted one of its stars, Lupita Nyong’o, best supporting actress. But “12 Years a Slave” had a narrative that resonated deeply with voters, and even though they were big wins, handing out an award to people of color every now and then is not enough to many.
“Every time I say the same thing: Until we get a position of power, with a green-light vote, it’s not going to change,” Spike Lee said in an interview a few hours after the nominations came out. “We may win an Oscar now and then, but an Oscar is not going to fundamentally change how Hollywood does business. I’m not talking about Hollywood stars. I’m talking about executives. We’re not in the room.”
Which snubs were you most shocked by? Let us know in the comments and see the full list of nominees below.
BEST PICTURE
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight
=============================
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
=============================
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
=============================
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed
=============================
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
=============================
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Anomalisa
Boy and the World
Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There
=============================
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Sicario
COSTUME DESIGN
Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
=============================
DIRECTING
The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight
=============================
DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom
=============================
DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)
Body Team 12
Chau, beyond the Lines
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Last Day of Freedom
=============================
FILM EDITING
The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
=============================
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Embrace of the Serpent
Mustang
Son of Saul
Theeb
A War
=============================
MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Mad Max: Fury Road
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out
the Window and Disappeared
The Revenant
=============================
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
Bridge of Spies
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
=============================
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
“Earned It,” Fifty Shades of Grey
“Manta Ray,” Racing Extinction
“Simple Song #3,” Youth
“Til It Happens To You,” The Hunting Ground
“Writing’s On The Wall,” Spectre
=============================
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
=============================
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay’s Super Team
We Can’t Live without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow
=============================
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
Ave Maria
Day One
Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)
Shok
Stutterer
=============================
SOUND EDITING
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
SOUND MIXING
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
=============================
VISUAL EFFECTS
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
=============================
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
The Big Short
Brooklyn
Carol
The Martian
Room
=============================
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
Bridge of Spies
Ex Machina
Inside Out
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton
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