So as of this morning at 08:18 ET (and seriously, what a weirdly specific time slot — does it have numerological significance?), the weeks of speculation about what the 2017 Oscar nominations would be came to an end. The weeks of speculation about what the 2017 Oscar nominations mean can now begin.
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There is, firstly, considerable good news especially if you or your fave film professional is listed under the “surprise” portion of this feature and not under “snubs.” In a more general sense, the 2017 nominee list also resoundingly addresses a fear some had expressed in the lead-up: namely that, while there were several black filmmakers, black-issues films and a lot of actors and actresses of color in the running, those films — specifically “Moonlight,” “Hidden Figures” and “Fences” — could end up cannibalizing each other’s votes. (We’ll leave documentaries to one side for the moment, but it’s worth noting that of the five nominees, three speak directly to issues of racism in America and came from black filmmakers — Ava DuVernay‘s “13th,” Ezra Edelman’s “O.J.: Made In America” and Raoul Peck‘s “I Am Not Your Negro” — while “Life, Animated” is directed by black filmmaker Roger Ross Williams, and the final entry, Gianfranco Rosi‘s “Fire At Sea,” might be European, but is explicitly about the immigrant crisis.)
Not only did the cannibalization among those narrative features not happen, hearteningly there is almost a sense that they bolstered each other’s support by being such different propositions. The fact that all three films ended up with Best Picture nominations — to say nothing of Garth Davis‘ “Lion,” which also stars and concerns people of color; and Jeff Nichols‘ “Loving,” which scored an unexpected but hugely welcome Best Actress nod for Ruth Negga — points out and rewards as never before the diversity of non-white storytelling, not just narratively, but in terms of ambition and execution, too.
Denzel Washington‘s “Fences” is perhaps the most traditionally Oscar-y fare: a hugely respected actor-turned-director who also stars (and was nominated as an actor) in an adaptation of a well-received play, co-starring a previously nominated actress. Barry Jenkins‘ “Moonlight” is the little breakout film that could, the festival circuit/arthouse critical darling featuring a largely unknown cast from a relatively inexperienced filmmaker. And Theodore Melfi‘s “Hidden Figures” is the runaway crowdpleaser, an enormous feel-good hit that was already on track to break $100m domestically before it was anointed a three-time nominee. Those three films were significantly different enough from each other to mount separate campaigns that didn’t overlap and didn’t rely on any one of them being “the black movie” solely tasked with addressing last year’s #OscarsSoWhite embarrassment.
Seven of 20 acting nominees are non-white (up from, well, zero, last year). Every acting category has at least one black nominee. Black actresses are in the majority in the Supporting Actress category. Four of five nominated documentary directors are black, and four of the nine Best Picture nominations have gone to films with non-white leads. The only asterisk we may need to insert in all this positivity is that for all of this excellent and very much deserved representation, Barry Jenkins is the only black directing nominee (only the fourth ever), and so all hopes for our first black Best Director Academy Award-winner now rest on his shoulders — remember, Steve McQueen did not win for “12 Years A Slave.”
Elsewhere in firsts: The great Bradford Young has received his first nomination for “Arrival” — the first African-American cinematographer to be so honored. And Joi McMillon has become the first African-American woman ever to be nominated for an Editing Oscar, for her work, with co-editor Nat Sanders, on “Moonlight.” There is still work to be done — there is precious little Asian or Hispanic representation, for example — but the reason these and all the above stories are cause for celebration is the depth and reach of their distribution. Multiple nominees for different movies in different categories, in front of and behind the camera, mean that it’s far harder to write off this phenomenon as a tokenist knee-jerk reaction to #OscarsSoWhite. And so hopefully, hopefully we are justified in regarding it as a sign of things to come.
But.
In the war for diversity and inclusion, there is more than one front, and not all have received such a boost from the 2017 nominations. Joi McMillon’s editing nod cited above is groundbreaking based on two factors — her ethnicity and her gender — and while the 2017 nominations have made significant improvements in the representational diversity of the former, the latter has, if anything regressed even since last year, which was hardly a towering pinnacle of female recognition. McMillon is not only the only black woman nominated in that category, she’s the only woman nominated at all. By contrast, last year, two of the five films nominated for Editing had female editors — “Mad Max: Fury Road” was cut by Margaret Sixel and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” by Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey, and Sixel went on to win it.
