The Oscar nominations rolled in, and is it surprising to say that they are disappointing? Like every year with this nomination list comes controversy and nomination snubs. Something that has been getting a lot of people mad this year is that the list looks “very white and very male.” The Best Director category only has male nominees, and out of the nine movies nominated for Best Picture seven of them revolved around males. Just recently, the Academy made their voters more diverse, having added 14 more members with more than half being women and more than a third being people of colour. So, why are these nominations not diverse?
Like I said earlier, the Best Director category was all-male, and out of the 5 nominees, 4 are white except for Bong Joon Ho, who directed Parasite. This year we had amazing movies directed by women like Great Gerwig’s Little Women, which got 6 nominations including Best-Adapted screenplay, Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, which got no nominations even though it seemed like a front runner and Mati Diop’s The Atlantics.
Other than all the women director nomination snubs, there is also the lack of persons of colour getting nominated. The only two people of colour nominated are Bong Joon Ho and Cynthia Erivo (Harriet). Would you be surprised if I told you that Cynthia Erivo is nominated for playing a slave? It seems like black people can only be appreciated as good actors when they play slaves. Some of the biggest snubs in that category is Akwafina for her role in The Farewell, a role which won a Golden Globe, Eddie Murphy’s Dolemite and the cast of Parasite. Numerous twitter users have voiced their point of views and how disappointed they feel about the Oscar nominations:
We live in an era where the diversity in the media is becoming stronger and stronger: songs that are not in English get high-ranking spots on charts and millions of views online, fantastic foreign movies like Parasite become very successful and the list goes on. However, it would be nice if the award shows that dictate what is worth praise (even though in my point of view it doesn’t mean anything) can showcase that diversity. It would be nice if award shows explored the diverse talent of more representative nominees.