{"id":5003,"date":"2020-01-24T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bracketyackrc.wpengine.com\/?p=5003"},"modified":"2020-01-24T08:00:12","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T13:00:12","slug":"another-award-season-another-diversity-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=5003","title":{"rendered":"Another Award Season, Another Diversity Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Joyelle Ronan<\/em><\/p>\n

Award season is a great time to celebrate diverse American and foreign films. Unfortunately, award shows such as The Academy Awards, also known as The Oscars, notoriously lack female and POC representation. They\u2019re about as diverse as the list of U.S. Presidents. I feel like if it weren\u2019t for the actor category being divided by gender, Joaquin Phoenix would sweep Best Actress this season. While every year Hollywood\u2019s diversity problem is discussed, nothing ever seems to change.<\/span><\/p>\n

As an amateur (emphasis on amateur) filmmaker, the award I pay the most attention to is the Best Director Award. If we take a look at this year\u2019s Oscar nominees for the category, we see four white men and one Asian man. While I\u2019m happy director Bong Joon-ho of the film Parasite is nominated, I can\u2019t help but wonder (and quote the 1999 pop band 702) “Where My Girls At?”<\/span><\/p>\n

You might be asking yourself, \u201cMaybe there weren\u2019t any good female directors this year?\u201d That\u2019s a valid question but the answer is no. You are very wrong. A lot of women directed both critically and financially successful movies in 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

My fav and previous nominee Greta Gerwig gave us another perfect pairing of Saoirse Ronan and Timothee Chalamet in <\/span>Little Women (2019)<\/span><\/i>. She was snubbed in the directing category but nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Actress Olivia Wilde directed the comedy <\/span>Booksmart<\/span><\/i>. Lulu Wang crushed it by writing and directing A24 drama <\/span>The Farewell<\/span><\/i>. Joanna Hogg, Lorene Scafaria, and Mati Diop also directed great films this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking at the stats, only five women have ever been nominated and Kathryn Bigelow, director of the <\/span>The Hurt Locker<\/span><\/i>, is the only winner. In the 92 years that these awards have been around, only one woman has won Best Director. There have been six Black directors nominated, no wins. Five Asian directors (one Asian-American) have been nominated with Ang Lee winning the award two times. I don\u2019t think I need to continue listing statistics, It\u2019s pretty clear there is a problem here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Best Director is certainly not the only category lacking diversity, it just happens to be one of the biggest categories of the night. Members of the Academy vote for the winners so We the People don\u2019t get a say. However, you can support directors and filmmakers just by going to see their films. Be conscious of the people who direct, write, produce, and design what you are watching. Talented people deserve recognition and should be celebrated not repressed for their gender, race, religion, or sexuality.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Joyelle Ronan Award season is a great time to celebrate diverse American and foreign films. Unfortunately, award shows such as The Academy Awards, also known as The Oscars, notoriously lack female and POC representation. They\u2019re about as diverse as the list of U.S. Presidents. I feel like if it weren\u2019t for the actor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}