Oscar nominations are in and diversity is not a winner - Women's Agenda

Oscar nominations are in and diversity is not a winner

The hotly anticipated Oscar nominations for the year have been announced, with The Grand Budapest Hotel and Birdman leading the table with nine nominations each. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel was confirmed as the favourite for the best picture Oscar when it won the same accolade at the Golden Globes earlier this week. Its nominations include best picture, best directing, best cinematography, best costume design, best editing, best makeup and hairstyling, best original score and production design. Interestingly, none of its stars got nominated for any of the best actor or actress categories.

Along with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s genre-defying film Birdman, other films that were highly regarded by the academy were The Imitation Game with eight nominations, Boyhood and American Sniper with six, and Whiplash, Interstellar and Foxcatcher with 5 apiece.

Iraq War drama American Sniper was largely ignored by this week’s Golden Globes, but was highly regarded by the Academy with nominations for best picture, best actor, best editor and best writing.

The nominations have attracted criticism very familiar to the Oscars, but perhaps more defined this year than ever. The Academy has long been criticised for avoiding diversity when awarding the highest honours (and directing them instead towards actors playing characters like the male, American war hero in American Sniper).

This year, not only were the nominations dominated by American men, but there were deserving candidates who diverge from this mould who were left off the list altogether.

Selma, heralded as the first film about the civil rights movement to actually focus on the African-American leadership of the era, was largely snubbed by the Academy. It received one nomination for best picture and one for best original song, but was expected to receive several more. The biggest surprises were that lead actor David Oyelowo did not get nominated in the best actor category for his portrayal of Martin Luther King, and that Ava DuVernay did not get nominated for best director.

If she had been nominated, DuVernay would have made history by becoming the first African American woman to be nominated for an Oscar in that category.

DuVernay did break this record earlier this week, when she became the first African-American woman in history to win a Golden Globe for best directing.

Also snubbed was a film widely congratulated for drawing attention to the desperately few women in directing roles: Angelina Jolie’s directing debut Unbroken. With Jolie, considered a certainty for a best director nomination, left off the list, all of the nominees in this category were men.

The lack of women in top roles in the film industry, on and off-screen, was highlighted earlier this week by research released by the Centre Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.

The study revealed that the number of women directing any of the top 250 highest-grossing films has actually dropped since the late 90s. It showed that in 2014, women directed only 7% of the highest-earning films. Women also remain grossly underrepresented in producing, writing and editing roles as well. 

So the question remains, when will Hollywood start supporting diversity in film and television?

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