The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has spoken and there is not a single good movie about women or people of color. According to the Academy’s all-knowing authority, women did not star in great movies this year, and they certainly didn’t make any. There are also zero good directors or actors of color. I guess the white men of the “Best Actor” category and the other white men of the “Best Director” category make the best movies in Hollywood, bar none. Everyone else should just go home.
While I don’t think any of the above is true, it is extremely disturbing that this is the message the Academy has sent this year. They have told us and the movie-watching children of America that there are still boys’ clubs in the country where women and minorities need not apply, and they have done so in spite of ample evidence that their prejudices are wrong.
“Gone Girl” was one of the most highly anticipated and highest grossing films of the year, yet the Academy felt no need to reward this movie about a complex and terrifying female protagonist with a “Best Picture” or “Best Director” nomination. In fact, only one of the women nominated for “Best Actress” is in a movie nominated for “Best Picture,” and that woman, Felicity Jones, plays second fiddle to Eddie Redmayne in “The Theory of Everything.”
In a more saddening fact, not a single person of color is nominated in an acting category for the first time since 1998. While there should certainly be more than two Oscar-worthy movies about people of color made in a year, the fact that “Get On Up” and “Selma” were made and snubbed is significant. These snubs are significant not just for the color of the characters and crew behind them but because of the people they depicted: strong, complex, independent men and women who left an indelible mark on history. They were not the characters the Oscars like to reward: slaves, abusive parents, maids, laborers and corrupt villains. Nor was the director of “Selma,” Ava DuVernay, who made the movie a sweeping epic in spite of a meager $20 million budget, a member of the old Hollywood guard.
The Academy’s failings are disappointing because of the message they send about racial and gender progress in America and because of the younger generation of aspiring actors and filmmakers who will watch this year’s awards and see no one “like them.” We deserve a better Academy, one that doesn’t see last year’s win for “12 Years a Slave” as compensation for snubbing “Selma,” and one that can find a female-led film since “Million Dollar Baby” as captivating as the public does. We deserve a better Hollywood.
Leigh Terry is a junior majoring in economics. Her column runs biweekly.
