How the Oscars’ Lack of Diversity Reflects Hollywood

(This article appeared previously on PBS NewsHour.)

For the first time in 20 years, all of the Academy Award nominees for leading and supporting acting roles are white. One prominent snub, the civil rights film, Selma, which snagged a Best Picture nod but nothing for its black female director, actors or writers. PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill spoke to two movie critics, Mike Sargent of Pacifica Radio and Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post, about the 2015 Oscar nominations, and what they tell us about the Academy or about the films themselves.

GWEN IFILL: So, Ann Hornaday, what do today’s nominations tell us about the kinds of films that Hollywood is making and the kinds of films that Hollywood is awarding?

ANN HORNADAY: Well, at least for today, it looks like it’s kind of a boys show.

And even when you look at the Best Picture nominees — and, gratifyingly, Selma was nominated for Best Picture — so many of those are movies are journeys undertaken by men, either the great men of The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game or the young man of Boyhood or the actor of Birdman.

So it is a striking sort of tableaux of men and their stories being represented in that group.

IFILL: Mike Sargent, what struck you most when you first watched and saw these nominations?

MIKE SARGENT: Well, unfortunately, I wasn’t very surprised.

I mean, these nominations, I believe, reflect Hollywood in general and reflect what is coming out in film in general. And I agree with my co-critic that it is unfortunately something of a white boys club. Most of the films are written, produced and directed by white men.

And, you know, you have to also look at how the Academy is set up and who it is that actually gets to vote and how you actually become an Academy member. Ironically, it’s similar to the way it’s depicted in Selma before the Voting Rights Act. You have to be nominated by somebody who is already in the Academy, and they kind of have to vet you, and you have to pass through this whole system.

And, meanwhile, if you get nominated, you’re offered entry into the Academy, but if consistently the people who are nominating, the people who are voting are a boys club and an all-white male boys club, then you know what? This is what we get.

IFILL: Well, Ann Hornaday, let me ask you about that since this very same composition of an Academy voted for 12 Years a Slave last year, which was helmed by a black male director. The Help has been well-received, a couple other movies with racial themes over the years.

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ANN HORNADAY: Oh, sure. But those might be exceptions that prove the rule. I don’t take anything away from — especially from 12 Years a Slave, which was a magnificent achievement. But, to Mike’s point, the demographics are — first of all, we’re talking about a relatively small group of people.

You know, there are between 5,000 and 6,000 members and they are 93 percent Caucasian, 76 percent male and the median age is 63 according to a study done by The Los Angeles Times two years ago.

So we’re looking at a demographic slice of life that isn’t necessarily representational of the culture. And, by contrast, let’s look at The Golden Globes. We used to sort of pooh-pooh The Golden Globes and the Hollywood Foreign Press as being, I don’t know, lightweights or not quite of our station, but they ended up being so forward-looking and much more representational in their nominations and their wins.

IFILL: Mike Sargent, a lot of the debate about Selma in particular was about its accuracy, about its historical fidelity. Do you think that hurt it?

SARGENT: I think it definitely hurt it, and I also feel it is kind of a load of malarkey. I mean, let’s face it. Historical films in general always have a certain amount of elements that are not specifically historically accurate.

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And — whether agreeing or not agreeing that campaign effectively allows The Producers Guild to not get behind [Selma director Ava DuVernay], The Directors Guild to not get behind her and ultimately, the Academy can’t back a film that, quote unquote, "has a controversy" over its inaccuracy. Meanwhile, a film like Argo won for Best Screenplay and Best Picture. Not only was it historically inaccurate, but the main character is a Latino played by Ben Affleck.

IFILL: Ann Hornaday, hoow much of this has to do with good old-fashioned campaigning? We have all seen the “for your consideration” ads, the stepped-up advertising in general for all kinds of movies leading up to Oscar nominations. Maybe somebody else just did a better job?

HORNADAY: You're right, Gwen. The campaigns have reached Washingtonian proportions in terms of their budgets and their bare-knuckled seriousness.

And so it could be that the campaigning hurt Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo this year, but it could have been also something as arcane as how many screeners the studio sent out to the guilds while they were voting on their award, so that it didn’t get maybe the momentum that it could have had in the last few weeks.

So it might be overdetermined, as an economist might say, in terms of the reasons why some people got in and some people didn’t.

IFILL: Mike Sargent, you started this conversation by saying you weren’t that surprised. Does that mean that you were discouraged?

MIKE SARGENT: Well, I am somewhat discouraged.

I guess, to me, this is sort of systematic and institutionalized. You know, it strikes me, a very important point about Hollywood is that, you know, there’s this myth that black films don’t travel. So, as a result, no matter how much money your film makes here — and I’m talking about black film, not necessarily a Denzel Washington film — I’m talking about whether you’re Kevin Hart or whatever. You live and die here in the U.S., because those films are not distributed internationally.

So, as a result, in a way, you’re sort of ghettoized into just having your films play here and that myth perpetuating itself that, oh, the black experience is not of any interest to the rest of the world.

IFILL: Well, we will be able to watch and see what happens next in all of this, not only Oscar night, but after that.