This year’s awards season culminated in an Oscars that began with apprehension and ended with victory for those dedicated to diversity in the film industry. When the nominations came in, there was a great deal of backlash at the skipping over of several critically acclaimed films: Most notably, there were no female directors nominated, and the Farewell did not receive any nominations. Conversely, films like Joker (which has been dismissed by many proponents of diversity due to its attitude towards its female characters) and Little Women (which has a notable lack of characters of color) received a great deal of nominations. However, the awards show itself delivered an unprecedented amount of prestige to the most diverse and subversive films within its pool of nominees.
The clear winner of the night was Korean thriller-comedy Parasite. Director Bong Joon-Ho took home four trophies: Best International Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture, making it the first foreign-language film to win the coveted Best Picture award, and the first film ever to win under the newly-renamed Best International Film, which has been changed to allow for English-language movies from outside of America to compete in the awards circuit. Joon-Ho accepted his awards with humility, taking the entirety of his speech for Best Director to compliment the losing nominees: “When people in the U.S. were not familiar with my films, Quentin [Tarantino] always put my films on his list. He’s here, thank you so much. Quentin, I love you. And Todd [Phillips] and Sam [Mendes], great directors that I admire. If the Academy allows, I would like to get a Texas chainsaw, split the award into five and share it with all of you,” Joon-Ho said.
This was not the only sign of this years’ show’s dedication to diversity. Around the halfway point of the show, Jojo Rabbit director Taika Waititi took to the stage and delivered a land recognition, or a statement paying homage to the Indigenous tribes that previously lived on the land Hollywood now sits on. “The academy would like to acknowledge that tonight we have gathered on the ancestral lands of the Tongva, the Tataviam, and the Chumash. We acknowledge them as the first peoples of this land on which the motion pictures community lives and works,” Waititi said.
Despite the obvious strides made in the realm of diversity, this year’s Academy Awards did not escape commentary on their initial lack of consideration. Steve Martin and Chris Rock’s opening riff included several digs about the lack of female director nominees, as well as some comments about the lack of people of color in the room: “Cynthia [Erivo] did such a great job in Harriet [as Harriet Tubman] hiding black people, that the Academy got her to hide all the black nominees!” Rock said. Additionally, the presence of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stirred up conversations on the issue of worker exploitation and the wealth gap, especially when films with clear anti-capitalist messages such as Parasite and documentary American Factory received so much praise. In fact, one of the most surprising moments came during Julia Reichert’s acceptance speech for American Factory, which ended in the common Marxist saying “workers of the world unite.”
All in all, the ninety-second Oscars were well-received by critics, actors, producers, and casual moviegoers alike. “I was glad Jojo [Rabbit] won what it did, it’s the best movie of all time,” Hallah Herb ‘20 said.
A month and a half into 2020, there are already several films that viewers should keep an eye on come next awards season. Birds of Prey has a seventy-eight percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the unprecedented number of female contributors makes it a sensible candidate for Academy members seeking to avoid future criticism. Additionally, upcoming movies such as Pixar’s Soul and the adaptation of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s musical In the Heights seem to be viable contenders just from the trailers. This year’s awards season showed that Hollywood is on an upward curve when it comes to representation; a curve that will only continue to bring more voices into the film industry.
