Women & the Oscars

The 2020 Oscars premiered just over 2 weeks ago, and history was made. With the best actor award going to Joaquin Phoenix for Joker, best supporting actor going to Brad Pitt for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the best award of the night, best picture going to Parasite. Although I really enjoyed everything that happened that night, I started to realize who was snubbed of the most awards, women. It has also become normalized for the academy to leave out important women of the cinema world every year. Today, we are going to reflect on one of Hollywood’s biggest errors, snubbing talented women of recognition.

Best Director Award

Perhaps Hollywood’s biggest goof-up this year, was not nominating any female directors for the best director award. The biggest loss of the night, was Greta Gerwig not being nominated for directing “Little Women”, one of the highest rated movies of the year. With a 95% rotten tomatoes rating, and an 8/10 IMDB rating. Prior to this year, no female directors were nominated in 2019 either. Alongside Greta, Lulu Wang was also not nominated for her direction of “The Farewell”, a very well recieved movie from critics and audiences alike. All of the nominations were male, some who very much deserved it, like Bong Joon Ho for Parasite, Todd Phillips for Joker, and Sam Mendes for 1917. On the other hand, I believe that Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorseese were nominated just because of their reputation, and not the quality of their film. I just watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, directed by Quentin Tarantino, and I was a little disappointed. Since Tarantino has already made a name for himself, it was easy for the academy to nominate whatever he put out that year. Especially since it was his second last movie, it was important for him to be nominated for the media’s sake. Plus, why would the academy not benefit from a Leo x Brad x Margot x Tarantino collaboration. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was definitely not his best work, and should have been replaced by one of the more talented female directors. If this situation was flipped, with only female directors nominated, the entire world would go into a state of shock, with some angry misogynists refusing to even stream the event.

Women Supporting Women

2 hours before the Oscars, the red carpet is streamed. With every celebrity showing his or her luxurious outfit they came to win in. Of course, men wear the same tux to every event, with the exception of a few. But, women come to serve. One woman specifically delighted audiences all over the world with her outfit, Natalie Portman. Upon first viewing, it seems like she is just wearing a beautiful dress, like she is expected too, and a long black cape. When you look closely at the cape, it has the names of every female director who wasn’t nominated embroidered onto it. This was a whole power mood, and set the night off. Best supporting actress winner, Laura Dern, also showed her support for Greta Gerwig, saying that she would give the oscar to her right now if she could. For Portman, this wasn’t the first time she called out the academy for not supporting female direction. While presenting the award for the best director, she savagely roasted the academy by saying that none of the nominations were female, in front of everyone.

Women of Colour in the Industry

Besides female directors, many actresses were also snubbed of their nominations. In the best actress category, only one woman of colour was nominated; in the best supporting actress category, there were no women of colour. Talented actresses like Lupita Nyongo, Awkwafina and Jennifer Lopez were completely snubbed of any recognition. How come Lupita wasn’t even considered but Charlize Theron was nominated?

Hollywood Accepting Misogyny

Whenever a woman is dominating in the film industry, there is always a huge line of bitter men following her. When Brie Larson was casted as Captain Marvel, white men started to lose their minds. The amount of hate generated towards casting a female superhero, became a phenomenon of sorts, referred to as “the needle in the eye”. This means that men were saying they would rather have a needle in the eye, then watch a movie made and lead by women. This effect repeated with the release of Wonder Woman, GhostBusters, Charlie’s Angels, and Little Women. The needle in the eye effect is one of the reasons behind Little Women being snubbed at the Oscars. It is time for Hollywood to stop normalizing women being constantly put down.

This year and for the rest of Hollywood's existence, the academy and the rest of the world need to start recognizing and appreciating talented women, and that is on LUPITA.