Malaika Gabra, Year 12
The nominations are in for the 2016 Academy Awards… and a lot of people are not very happy. Again. This year’s full list of Oscar nominations can be seen here.
Most of the winner’s were hardly unexpected; Mad Max, The Revenant and The Martian were all films that had been dubbed ‘Oscar-worthy’ from their releases.
So, what is the outrage all about?
Besides being spectacular films, all the Oscar nominations this year have something else in common: all the nominations were awarded to white actors, directors, and composers. For the second year in a row, the Academy has not recognized any minority actors. Even films that depict and tell stories about black lives like “Straight Outta Compton” and “Creed” were not awarded any nominations except for their white actors or white writers.
Snubs like these have left social media, critics and commentators in an uproar with twitter hashtags like #oscarssowhite. In fact, The Atlantic, cited this as the first time since 1995 that all 20 acting nominees are white.
If anything, the Oscar nominations speak of the larger issue of diversity in Hollywood in terms of race, sexuality and gender. The New York Times chief film critic, Manohla Dargis made an interesting point when she said that “the primary reason the Oscars are so white this year and most years is that the movie industry is overwhelmingly white. That’s infuriating, but that’s not shocking, and it sure isn’t news. And if that bothers people, then they need to start complaining loudly and perhaps even begin voting with their dollars. By, say, supporting movies with minorities and women. Because the only way the industry will change is if people give them hell.”
Dargis has a point. Even in terms of gender, the Oscars let down this year again. Of the 14 screewriters and 5 directors nominated this year, all were men. In fact, out of the 87 years the Oscars have been around, only 4 female directors have ever been nominated. Four. Even though the uproar is (hopefully) being heard by the academy, we have to ask ourselves how bad does it have to get before the 6000 members of the Academy finally award a film with diversity?
