Click here for more from our Oscars 2018 coverage, including the Best & Worst of the ceremony, all the speeches, and the Snubs & Surprises.
It was inevitable that this year’s Oscar ceremony would be one driven by The Issues. After all, it came after of a tumultuous few years, begun by the #OscarsSoWhite controversy (which led to an attempt to diversify the Academy membership), continued with the victory of “Moonlight” last year in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, and mostly recently in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, those that followed after, the subsequent #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, and increasing talk about mainstream representation of minority filmmakers following the success of “Wonder Woman” and “Black Panther,” among others.
Unlike last year, dominated by “La La Land” until the “Moonlight” surprise, a time when it felt everyone was so shell-shocked that they mostly wanted distraction, the films were mostly more issues-driven too: LGBT romance with “Call Me By Your Name,” female representation with “Lady Bird” and “The Post,” race and liberal hypocrisy with “Get Out,” race, police brutality and powerful women with “Three Billboards,” the outsider with “The Shape Of Water,” even Nazi-fighting with “Darkest Hour” and “Dunkirk.”
And so it proved last night: from Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue, which touched on Weinstein, Trump et al, through to presenting moments like a moving tribute to Dreamers from Lupita Nyong’o and Kumail Nanjiani, to the spotlighting of “Black Panther” and “Wonder Woman” in montages, to many winners shouting out issues (team “Coco” talking about representations among the best), politics, and specifically the politics of representation, was everywhere on the Dolby stage last night.
But unfortunately, the faces actually picking up statues on stage left the film business open to accusations that they wanted people to ‘do what we say, not as we do.’ Excluding the gender-segregated acting categories, only four women took home Oscar trophies (“Coco” co-director Darla K. Anderson, “The Silent Child” writer/producer Rachel Shenton, “Remember Me” co-writer Kristen Anderson-Lopez and “Darkest Hour” make-up artist Lucy Sibbick), versus 32 men. At least a similarly large proportion of winners were caucasian and (at least openly) straight.
And therein lies the rub with the Academy’s new membership push. The younger, more diverse intake has certainly led to some more interesting winners, at least at the top of the ticket — “12 Years A Slave,” “Birdman,” “Spotlight,” “Moonlight” and “The Shape Of Water” might be the best run of Best Picture winners since the 1970s (even if you’re agnostic about “Birdman,” it’s a weird film that wouldn’t have stood a chance ten years earlier). But while the Academy can point to wins from some of those films, or that four of the last five Best Directors have been Mexican, or nominations for the likes of Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig, as proof that things are changing, there’s only so much that can be done when your pickings are from an industry that is chronically dominated by white men.
As was noted during the ceremony itself, just 11% of feature film releases are directed by women. The WGA’s most recent report revealed that only 17% of movie writing gigs are taken by women. Just 18% of movie producers were women as recently as 2018. And most of the technical fields, beyond more traditionally gendered ones like Costume Design (where Mark Bridges was a rare male winner this year), it’s hard to find a nominated woman — Jennifer Morrison was the first EVER female cinematography nominee this year, Sara Bennett won the first VFX Oscar for a female nominee for thirty years for “Ex Machina” a few years back.
Awards are the most visible reflection of the state of the diversity of the industry, and it’s easy to get depressed about the lack of progress that seemed to be made this year, versus the rhetoric being deployed on stage. But that’s what made the ceremony’s most exciting political moment, one that felt less like the industry forcing itself to take its medicine than some of the others, one that feels like it could actually lead to real change, stand out.
