How will the Oscars adapt to a changing popular consciousness?

The Academy Awards have always stuck to a certain script. But now, the perceptions on and about Hollywood are changing under the influence of social media campaigns. How will this reflect in its nominations and ceremony?

January 22, 2018 07:32 pm | Updated 08:14 pm IST

The Oscars follow a predictable formula, but this time may be different.

The Oscars follow a predictable formula, but this time may be different.

This is a blog post from

 

Oscar awards are first and foremost a salute to a pure and uncompromising Hollywood principle — celebrating the stars. As the #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns continue to grow online, and debates around racial bias in showbiz continue to pick up pace, the Academy Awards this year have major pitfalls to navigate.

The Academy is set to announce nominations on January 23. All eyes are set on who will and who won’t make the cut. The category that will garner maximum interest is Best Director. Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Dee Rees’ racially-charged Mudbound have been nominated by most other major awards, without the women making it to the Best Director nominations. Additionally, Jordan Peele’s absence from nominations in this category, despite the growing impact of his film Get Out , has become controversial. The Best Director award gathers a lot of debate primarily because it’s not just any other award; but one that embodies power and clout in the Hollywood system. White men have clearly dominated this space .

 

 

Take a look at the nominees list at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs this year. The Globes nominated Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo Del Toro, Martin McDonagh and Steven Spielberg. Three of these — Scott, Nolan and Spielberg — are faces with real clout in Hollywood. The BAFTAs threw a surprise when they included Denis Villeneuve for Blade Runner 2049 ; and Luca Guadagnino for Call Me By Your Name , along with Guillermo Del Toro and Martin McDonagh. While both have made fine films with signature directorial touches, it just makes the omission of Gerwig from this category more questionable.

Giving women directors less importance has been a persisting malaise. Women directors get smaller marketing and promotional budgets as well as a much smaller pie of distribution. University studies and research tell us that the number of screens on which a film directed by women is shown plummets by 55-60%. This reflects the skew against women in Hollywood. While female actors hold forth before audiences and have a record of delivering performances that have shaped many an Oscar-winning movie, the female director is yet to be accorded due space. According to a study by the University of San Diego , the number of women directors amongst those who made the top 250 grosses in 2015, 2016 and 2017, stands at a dismal 7-9%.

As some on social media have argued, nominating women becomes difficult when so few make films. But this year is an exception with very well-received and successful films helmed by women. There’s also Patty Jenkins, as Wonder Woman has earned over $800 million worldwide and broken the glass ceiling for women in the superhero franchise films genre.

So far, four women have been nominated for the Best Director category, and only Kathryn Bigelow has won. In the current climate, rather than putting gender bias on the back burner, it makes better sense to welcome gender equality and include women directors. Oscars would be viewed as progressive if this happens.

 

The Oscars will do well to keep a PR statement ready, just in case a winner gets called out for harassment or sexual misconduct after a win.

 

The fact that Patty Jenkins hasn’t made the cut at any mainstream awards exposes a common omission — superhero films rarely make the nominations. While not all franchise films are worth considering for awards, some have been well-scripted, beautifully narrated stories on grand scales. One must also note that quite a few films in contention for awards this year have little connect with audiences; something that superhero films never have to worry about.

For instance, one wonders what possible connect James Franco’s The Disaster Artist could have with an audience without certified movie buffs? Nolan’s nominations for Dunkirk become amusing when viewed from this perspective. The young Nolan won over Hollywood with his Memento screenplay (nominated for Screenplay categories at the Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTA). And then he fell off the awards radar, despite masterfully reinterpreting the lukewarm Batman franchise and giving us The Dark Knight . It’s a fabulous film, superhero premise notwithstanding.

Leaving out superhero films beyond technical categories poses a risk for the Oscars — that of alienating the 16 to 35 age-group global audience. In urban centres across the world, young people watch superhero flicks and obsessively follow franchises on streaming giants like Netflix. That’s the Hollywood appetite that they have grown up consuming. The relateability factor has to be addressed by the Academy to course-correct in the long run.

Then there’s Jordan Peele. Unapologetic when he takes on biases and racial issues within Hollywood, Peele is suave, cool and the director of a hugely successful, social horror film Get Out . His opinion appeals to a cross section of urban Americans. If Get Out were viewed as not getting its due, the Oscars would be labeled racist and unfair to ethnic minorities. Get Out isn’t brilliant cinema per se. But its core premise — that of white folks going to any extent in exploiting a Black person — has resonated massively across America and the world. The Academy would do well to balance out the Get Out factor smartly this year.

And then there’s the unpredictable challenge of navigating the awards ceremony. It’s the men who have made it tough, as has the Hollywood Foreign Press. The Golden Globes did well when Seth Myers tackled sexual harassment and racism head on in his opening monologue. Then there was the smart choice of a black dress code, a shade most sport on the red carpet anyway. Add to that, women activists sharing front-row space with stars. The Globes have owned abuse of power with strategic thinking.

 

The Oscars have long been proud of their glittering front row — stars, winners and power-brokers of the past dressed in their best to give out awards and applaud winners. This year, four winners, have become unpalatable — Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Casey Affleck and Woody Allen. Harvey Weinstein has been expelled by the Academy. James Franco is under a cloud, despite being a hot favorite to be a Best Actor nominee. And then there’s Gary Oldman, a potential winner for the Best Actor award, but with an anti-Semitic remark on his record.

The Oscars will do well to keep a PR statement ready, just in case a winner gets called out for harassment or sexual misconduct after a win. The pointed way in which winners James Franco and Aziz Ansari got called out after the Golden Globes, these social media confessions aim at maximum impact. It is only natural to plan ahead, in case an Oscar-winner gets named as harasser after the glittering ceremony.

As for the night itself, a tribute to the contribution of women in cinema would seem to be in order, the way things have been going. Whether done as an audiovisual, or as a public statement, or in cinematic form, this would negate the perception that the Oscars are a conventional, straitjacket event. Putting women on top, even symbolically, might make a huge difference to setting the Academy Awards apart as a progressive salute to popular art.

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