Please welcome guest contributor Mark Blankenship, who you've previously heard from as a guest panelist on the Smackdown...
Even while getting rightfully criticized by presenters who mocked the mostly-white acting line-up and the all-male slate of directors, the Academy still managed to deliver an Oscar ceremony this year that was full of historically inclusive winners. All of those victories are exciting on their own, and some even point to larger trends that suggest there's hope for this awards body yet. If the patterns hold, then the Oscars just might become prizes for all artists, no matter who they are.
For instance, Parasite's historic Best Picture triumph is even more encouraging when you consider it alongside Moonlight's win (about queer black men and boys)...
And The Shape of Water (about mute, black, queer, Jewish, and working class outsiders fighting a patriarchal system), and Spotlight (about journalists and working-class families resisting systemic abuse). That's four of the last five winners that tell stories about marginalized people and progressive causes. They make Green Book's white-focused approach to race relations seem like the last gasp of an old guard, rather than a regression.
Bong Joon-Ho's win for Best Director also extends a recent line. Seven of the last eight directing winners are from Mexico, Taiwan, or South Korea, and the other guy is Damien Chazelle, who directed an original romanic musical. These are decidedly unlike the directing awards of the late 80s and 90s that went to two Oliver Stone war movies, Steven Spielberg's bloody combat movie, Clint Eastwood's macho regret western, Kevin Costner's white savior western, and Mel Gibson's brutal historical drama where the big moment of comic relief was a gay character getting thrown out a window to his death!
While it was reinforcing those shifts, this year's Oscars hopefully also marked the beginning of other meaningful changes.
For instance, maybe it won't seem quite so remarkable the next time a woman wins the original score Oscar, now that Hildur Guðnadóttir finally broke that ceiling. The two previous women to win for their scores were competing for the short-lived comedy score award, which makes Guðnadóttir the first woman to win in the traditional category. She's also only the third woman even to be nominated here, after Mica Levi for Jackie and Rachel Portman for Chocolat and The Cider House Rules. This category is still essentially the domain of white dudes, but this year has to count for something.
And while we're rightfully mourning the scant attention paid to brilliant films by women and people of color this year, we can take solace in facts like these:
* Karen Rupert Tolliver, who won in Original Short, is now the first black woman to win in ANY short category
* Taika Waititi is the first Maori artist to win ANY Oscar
* Women won in both documentary categories
* Women also won for production design, makeup, and costumes
* Elton John, an iconic gay legend, now has two Oscars
* Parasite is the first non-English screenplay winner since Talk to Her (2002) and the first time an Asian person has won any writing Oscar.
These victories don't erase the Academy's default to white and male artists, but they have a cumulative weight nevertheless. Something really does appear to be happening. The effort to expand and diversify the Academy, a long term plan spearheaded by former Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, does indeed appear to be shaking things up. And while no one who cares about inclusivity in cinema can afford to stop fighting -- just like no one who cares about inclusivity anywhere can ever afford to stop -- we owe it to ourselves to acknowledge the victories whenever or wherever they occur. Taking a moment to appreciate what's been gained is a crucial way to find the strength to push onward.
And sure, these are just, in the end, gold statues. They're not going to get immigrant children out of cages, and they're not going to give health insurance to people who work multiple jobs and still can't afford coverage. But when a diverse array of artists win high-profile recognition for telling a diverse array of stories, they help normalize the idea that everyone counts. In quite a few ways at the 92nd Academy Awards, the Oscars actually reminded us that that's true.
previously in 92nd Academy Awards coverage
musical performances, ranked
top five presenters or duos
embroidered fashion statements (literally)
new Oscar trivia
the winner and immediate afterthoughts