The gist of the ire being thrown at the Academy today has to do with 1) no black women being in the final five for Lead Actress (despite Michelle Yeoh becoming the first ever Asian to get a main acting nod) and 2) there being no females nominated for Best Director.
I won’t even bother with the former since it’s a topic that’s been conversed to death ever since #OscarsSoWhite showed up in 2014. No, let’s tackle the lack of female directing nominees.
The media basically launched a forced trending hashtag with completely outrageous headlines this morning: #OscarsSoMale. This hashtag won’t be going anywhere, especially since the outrage is, yet again, not justified.
Basically, film journos are pissed that Sarah Polley (“Women Talking”), Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”), Maria Schrader (“She Said”) and Charlotte Wells (“Aftersun”) weren’t in the best director lineup. “You had so many women to choose from,” they are saying. Take note that only one of these filmmakers (Polley) had their film nominated for Best Picture.
Women have won the Directing Oscar the past two years in a row, with Chloé Zhao taking home the 2021 prize for “Nomadland” and Jane Campion with “Power of the Dog” last year.
The truth is that this past year wasn’t very good for strongly-directed female-helmed films. Don’t believe me? CriticsTop10 tabulated over 900 top ten lists from last year, only one female-directed film figured in the top 15 most-listed films, and that would Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun.”
A case could be made for Wells deserving an Oscar nomination, but her film was always going to be too small and too artful for the AMPAS voting body.
Here’s the harsh truth for all of those complaining: There are no quotas in the Oscar race, no matter how much pressure certain advocacy groups might put on the academy and voters. You’re supposed to vote for the best, not by sex, by race, by gender etc. but by pure filmmaking quality.
I tackled this topic more extensively last week because I foresaw a backlash occurring after the Oscar nomination got announced.
