The 2020 Oscar nominations came out this week, with Joker leading the pack with 11 nominations. I was taking a look at the list and after searching the major categories I only had one thought: women in Hollywood must not have worked much this year.
I mean, Greta Gerwig definitely only wrote Little Women, certainly didn’t direct it.
Booksmart directed by Olivia Wilde wasn’t that good.
Tom Hanks just gave a performance all on his own in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. It certainly wasn’t based on a script or direction by Marielle Heller.
The Farewell by Lulu Wang wasn’t really that well done, and Awkwafina was only subpar in the lead role that she won a Golden Globe for.
And Hustlers as a whole was really overrated with a script and direction from Lorene Scarafina, especially Jennifer Lopez (I mean, people say it’s the best acting role of her career and she was nominated for all the Oscar precursor awards but is it REALLY worthy?). Queen and Slim? Eh, who cares that it was a highly reviewed film written by Lena Waithe, and directed by Mena Matsoukas?
Not to mention an only so-so dual role in Us done by Lupita Nyongo.
Oh, wait. These were all great…and eligible.
In a year where over 10% of highest-grossing 100 films were directed by women, 3 of which starred women of color, not a single female director was nominated for an Oscar and only 3 films nominated for Best Picture have females at the core of their stories (Little Women, Marriage Story, and Parasite). Not only that, but almost all the Best Picture nominees are centered around white people, especially white men, and a total of ONE person of color, Cyntia Erivo, was nominated for any of the acting categories. And yet they somehow found space to nominate Scarlett Johannson in two separate acting categories.
I’m not trying to say that the nominees this year aren’t worthy (except for Joker, Joker did not deserve 11 nominations), but rather that these voters need to actually SEE all of the eligible films and not just seek out the ones created and about people similar to themselves (read: movies about middle-aged white men made by middle-aged/old white men). Maybe if they would actually watch the movies made by women and people of color they would find something different that they end up liking instead of giving all the awards to a movie that attempts to humanize the worst elements of humanity. Maybe if we speak up enough, if we keep #OscarsStillWhite and #OscarsSoMale trending, then they’ll see that it’s time for a change.
But for now, I’ll just say what Issa Rae said this morning after the nominations.
All gifs from giphy.com