Luxe Kurves Magazine March 2018 | Page 44

by Andrea Diaz

2018 Oscars Nominations

On January 23rd, nominations were announced for the 90th annual Academy Awards. Academy president John Bailey was joined by actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish at the Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills to release the names of nominees this year; the award show will consist on twenty-four categories with several nominees competing for the win in each one.

In recent years, award shows like the Oscars and the Grammys have been under fire and have caused a lot of commotion due to their lack of diversity among the nominees, but it seems like this year's Oscar nominations might be giving the first (baby) step towards a more diverse and fair playground--or so we hope.

But even though this year's Academy Awards promise a more diverse pool of nominees, it is still not enough. There are still major groups who are still very much underrepresented such as people of color, hispanics/latinos, and women overall. This year's nominees might represent progress, but progress does not necessarily mean success. Sure, it may look like a huge difference compared to past nominations and it is, in fact, a huge difference to have four people of color nominated in acting categories that round up about twenty nominees when before there were none. But this is still not enough and the #OscarsSoWhite might not be over just yet.

According to this year's Academy award nominees list, only one of the five "best director" nominees is a woman, one of the five "best cinematography" nominees is a woman, four of the sixteen "screenwriters" nominated are women with only five people of color and only one woman of color. Two of the nine "best picture" nominees are stories that focus on people of color and only three are about women, four of the thirty producers in the "best picture" category are people of color with only eight women and zero women of color. Seven of the nine "best picture" nominees have white protagonists and only three of these are stories about women.

The numbers above are simply data collected that prove what we already know: major groups of society are still under/misrepresented in films and award shows, and although this years nominations show progress there is still a long way to go and plenty of cause to fight. These statistics are not the result of lack of talent in the underrepresented groups but merely privilege and preference for the overrepresented ones.

These numbers are not just to characterized the Academy Awards in a negative light (well, maybe a little), but they are also to remind us that we, as consumers, have the greatest power of all. We are the ones that define if a film is successful or not, and therefore we have to keep reminding each other to support all genres of films with all variations of cast members and stories. This isn't just about box office millions but rather about the underrepresentation of millions in the film industry.

The Academy Awards will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel for the second time and will air live on ABC Sunday March 4th.

Are the #OscarsSoWhite Finally Over?