More Than Just A Golden Statue?

By Shalom Chalson

UNCLE OSCAR?: Are the Academy Awards as prestigious as they appear to be if they only represent the opinions of a specific demographic? (GRAPHIC: ZHENG QIMING)

The Academy Awards will mark its 87th year of glitz, glamour, and the occasional clamour, on 22 Feb. As the mother of all hype-filled awards shows, the Oscars, as it is now known, is watched by millions every year. It exists as an annual television staple, a fact owed to its ability to beguile and confound.

Watching stars get rewarded or ridiculed provides us with great satisfaction. Because we connect to films on such a deep level, our relationship with films and the people who help make them is an intimate one. If the films we love are left out of something as important as the Oscars, we think of words like “snub”.

A snub happens when you try to high five someone and they turn their back, leaving your hand cold and alone. In the entertainment industry, snubs occur when widely lauded works of art go unrecognised by the organisations meant to give recognition. More often than not, the people doing the snubbing will disagree with the use of the word. Since to “snub” also means to ignore or show a lack of respect, most are quick to distance themselves from it.

White boys’ club

No one can claim to understand the preferences of all the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). But we do know that they are responsible for compiling the list of nominees and deciding the winners. And according to a 2012 Los Angeles Times poll, 94 per cent of them are white, 77 per cent are male, and the average age is 63. It is a highly exclusive club.

Can such an exclusionary club accurately reward films produced for our consumption?

While AMPAS is largely based in the US, films transgress geographical boundaries. They are consumed by audiences made up of more than just old white men. If the majority of voters are from a specific demographic, results are likely to be skewed towards a certain type of narrative in films.

Released in 2014, Selma documents the African-American Civil Rights Movement, charting Martin Luther King Jr. and his compatriots’ fight for freedom. The film itself is a testament to how far English language entertainment has come since the days of severe whitewashing (let’s pretend for a second that Ridley Scott did not direct a film called Exodus), eye-taping, and blatant racism.

As Selma received high praise from critics, it came as a shock that director Ava DuVernay was excluded from the list of Best Director nominees. Another category is sorely lacking in female nominees — Gillian Flynn, who wrote the screenplay for Gone Girl based on her best-selling novel, was left out of the running for Best Adapted Screenplay.

(Fortunately, nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress still included women, but this may not be the case next year. Bradley Cooper is rising up the ranks, I hear.)

With fewer women and racial minorities featured in the nominees, this year’s Oscars has been criticised heavily for being one of the most racist and sexist in recent years.

Beyond surface recognition

One might argue that a film should not be recognised simply because it carries an important social message or claims to be diverse. True, neither of those things necessarily entail quality.

Yet it’s important to acknowledge in this context that the playing field of film production isn’t levelled. Some films face more hurdles than others do. Making a radical film is a struggle in an industry where investment is heavy and runs up to the millions.

Films that challenge the status quo are seen as risks because of the assumption that audiences are unprepared for provoking works. Genre films often sell out due to their comfortable storylines.

But the cult statuses of films such as Hoop Dreams and Do The Right Thing suggest that audiences are ready for revolutionary films. Released around the early 90s, the two films address racial diversity and tension in America.

Yet the impulse to label them as exceptions is strong. In the years after their release, the film industry still struggles with embracing diversity. Anything that could make us uncomfortable appears to be an automatic risk.

Green-lighting diversity

Snubs can be debilitating because awards and nominations may encourage film-goers to choose films that have been critically recognised over others. Socially charged works that have been snubbed might therefore leave theatres unnoticed. While this is made less likely by the hype generator that is the Internet, an Oscar nomination nevertheless frames a movie’s title in bright neon.

More importantly, awards are able to influence production studios. They reduce the risk involved in funding a film of which an artistic or narrative predecessor has been recognised.

Exposure to varied narratives can help us better embrace and even celebrate diversity. When award shows give recognition for works that endorses heterogeneity, it is a signal to film studios that such narratives are worth investing in. Thus, we should care when award shows discourage diversity.

This is because it is necessary to promote diversity in our day and age. Not only do films provide us with valuable social commentary, they are able to touch us profoundly and shape our perspectives in understanding others.

Until we can demand and reward diversity, particularly in the pervasive field of entertainment, we should not sit quietly. The best way to realign the industry’s focus is to seek and support films that shift the global film perspective towards an equal representation of voices.

So let yourself be heard and call out a snub when you see it. Unless AMPAS starts paying attention to calls for more diversity, may they find the little gold man getting snubbed in return.