DIVERSITY, intersectionality and equal opportunity inclusion riders. In any normal Oscar year such words are about as likely to make an appearance as Harvey Weinstein was at Sunday night’s ceremony.
This has been no normal 12 months, however, and if the Academy Awards occasionally felt more like a sociology seminar than a showbiz bash for adults who play dress up for a living, then so be it. To quote a song from Chicago, a six Oscar-winner from yesteryear, they had it coming.
In certain ways, what had been billed as a night of possible surprises turned out to be anything but. Gary Oldman, Frances McDormand, Allison Janney, and The Shape of Water were such shoo-ins for the big prizes the bookies were turning down bets.
Biggest loser of the night was Greta Gerwig’s sublime Lady Bird, nominated in five categories, including best director, yet it walked away with nothing. Perhaps Academy members are still lying down in a darkened room recovering from having given a best director Oscar to a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, eight years ago. After all, it was only this year, the 90th awards, that a woman made it into the nominations for best cinematographer (Rachel Morrison, Mudbound).
Yet frame the picture another way and the times do indeed seem to be changing. There were awards for the anti-racist comedy horror Get Out; the Mexico-set Coco; transgender drama A Fantastic Woman; gay romance Call Me By Your Name; and The Silent Child, a short film about a deaf youngster. All received recognition: just not enough of it. Why, for instance, was there just one Oscar for Get Out, the year’s most audacious film and the one that has brought young audiences back to cinemas in their millions? In time, more nominations will translate into statuettes because the Academy membership, which decides the nominees and winners, is changing. After long being too male (77per cent), too pale (94per cent white), and too stale (average age 63), record numbers of new voters are being signed up.
Just as importantly, out in the real world films fronted by women (Wonder Woman, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast) are becoming the top earners at the box office, while superhero movie Black Panther is storming cinemas on its way to a worldwide gross of £1 billion. Never mind inclusion riders. Ultimately, cold hard numbers, not warm words, are the only language Hollywood truly understands.
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