Editor's Note, 2/28/13

Before last Sunday, I can’t remember ever sitting through an entire awards show. As the film editor of this fine publication, I felt it was my duty to watch closely as the best of Hollywood and beyond was recognized and celebrated, so I strapped in for the nearly four-hour ceremony.

The Academy Awards were first given in 1929. The categories then were more limited but largely the same as what we see today. Obviously I wasn’t there to witness the ceremony, but my imagination has been running wild: white-tie attire and champagne in those oddly shallow crystal glasses, all in black and white (color filmmaking was only just emerging).

Then, as now, the awards were given by and to people associated with major studios. But filmmaking today is entirely different than it was 80 years ago. The scale of filmmaking in that era made it prohibitively expensive for almost anyone but major studios to make a decent film. Today, I have more filmmaking technology in my smart phone than all of ’20s Hollywood put together, and the capability to craft artful, technically beautiful films is within reach for huge portions of the population. Beasts of the Southern Wild, whose budget is thought to be less than two million dollars, was the most-nominated “low-budget” film of this year. Beasts is considered an independent film—a production not associated with a major studio. The last decade has been a comparative heyday of Oscar recognition for independent films, but virtually all of the nominees continue to come from major studios and big-budget productions.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a group of nearly 6,000 film professionals, including experts in sixteen branches, from directing to executive to editing to sound. Membership is by invitation only, with the Board of Governors choosing from submissions from members and previous Oscar nominees and winners. This method of selecting members is inherently limiting, stacking the deck against independent filmmakers outside the Academy complex. It is reminiscent of our obsession with networking—at its worst, that unavoidable, detestable aspect of today’s job market that gets in the way of fair hiring. It comes down not to who is the best candidate but instead to who knows the right people. In career-scheming and in the Academy, everything feels very old-boys’ club.

And in fact, it is an old boys’ club! John Horn, Nicole Sperling and Doug Smith of the LA Times conducted a study in which they polled around 5,000 of the 5,765 voting members of the Academy. 77% of respondents were male. Five of the sixteen branches were less than one-tenth female. Another troubling aspect of the Academy’s make-up is the racial breakdown. A whopping 94% were white. The sweeping crowd shots of this year’s Awards further evidence the Academy’s (and the Hollywood glitterati’s) racial homogeneity.

This is not a call for affirmative action by the Academy for its members or nominees, though prominent figures (Denzel Washington to name one) have supported this idea. I lack the social science and Hollywood knowledge to have any sort of expertise in that area. Instead, this is meant to shed light on the inherently biased nature of the awards our society so piously reveres. The LA Times piece noted that The King’s Speech may have beaten out The Social Network for 2011’s Best Picture due to the inability of the older Academy (only 14% under 50 with a median age of 62) to relate to the latter’s internet-based plot. Later on they quoted Alfre Woodard, a black actress and Academy member, in her discussion of Shame, Steve McQueen’s NC-17 rated film about a sex addict: “I thought [Shame] was a brilliantly rendered piece but a subject matter that you don’t expect a certain older demographic would flock to see,” she said. I saw Shame and am inclined to agree with Mrs. Woodard. This year at the Oscars, three times as many men took home statues as did women, pointing to huge gender biases across all realms of Hollywood (and perhaps in the voting practices of the male-dominated Academy). Strikingly, only one woman (Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker) has ever won an Oscar for Best Director. The Academy’s limited diversity points to a limit in the diversity of the viewpoints they represent.

While all of this is pretty bad, it is simply the shortcomings of a trade organization and the awards they present. Far-reaching societal issues emerge when everyone and their mother gets wrapped up in who won what and which designer so-and-so wore. When I checked my Facebook after the Oscars, at least nine out of ten posts congratulated winners or lamented supposed injustices. A friend told me her mom DVRed the ceremony for her. People seem to really care. Our society is giving heaps of credence to an organization composed principally of old, white men who hire a young white man to make misogynistic jokes while presenting awards to three times as many men as women.

What can you do to stop all this? Not much, unfortunately. The Academy determines its own fate, and film lacks the vast landscape of minor production companies enjoyed by music fans everywhere. The major film industry doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. But what you can do is stop giving a damn. Make your own critical decisions about art. You don’t need to write or publish your opinions, but it is important to think and talk about them. Test your conclusions by reading other reviews. Don’t parrot everything you read, but be open to the possibility that your opinions may change. Have confidence in yourself. It’s your opinion that matters most.