The Oscars, and diversity in art
The Oscars are tonight, and the nominees are, once again, pretty heavily white and male. There are no women nominated in the directing category, again. Only one person of color was nominated for an acting role — out of four acting categories.
There was lots of backlash when the nominees came out: lots of critics on social media decrying the lack of diversity among the nominees. And then there was the usual backlash to the backlash: the people who said, like Stephen King, “I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality.”
I hear this argument a lot — meritocracy! Pick the best! Thinking about diversity would be sacrificing quality! What they often don’t realize is they are implicitly saying that diversity and quality are mutually exclusive. If you have more diverse people, you lower the quality of the pool. When there are no female directors nominated for best director, it implies that there just weren’t any talented female directors — which is, objectively, not true. There are countless more women and people of color each year who don’t get noticed by the institutions that give out awards, because they don’t know the right people or have the right agents. Because the people who nominate and vote on awards tend to be overwhelmingly white and male, and they tend to choose more people that look like them, people that are familiar, known quantities to them. Whose stories get told? What stories do directors choose to tell? Who even gets the opportunities to get their films made?
Some films that got snubbed this year featuring diverse stars and stories: Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers. All of the actors in Parasite. Greta Gerwig for directing Little Women. Awkwafina in The Farewell, and Lulu Wang for directing. Lupita N’yongo in Us. There were so many incredible performances by diverse actors it’s hard to believe anyone out there can argue “it’s about quality, not diversity.”
Two great further reads on this topic: My colleague Emily VanDerWerff wrote this week about how the Oscars industrial complex is responsible for the lack of diversity among the nominees, which I recommend reading. And I also recommend this piece by Aisha Harris in the NYT on why directors should stop blaming the lack of diverse roles in their films on history.
What I’m reading
I don’t want to be the strong female lead, New York Times. Brit Marling (aka The OA) on the lack of roles for women in Hollywood.
The wrong goodbye, Real Life Mag. On hurting a brand’s “feelings” when you unsubscribe from emails.
What we lose by hiring someone to pick up our avocados for us, New York Times.
The magical thinking of “The Goop Lab,” The New Yorker.
The new trophies of domesticity, The Atlantic. How we came to revere KitchenAid mixers and Le Creuset dutch ovens.
‘High Maintenance’ and the new TV fantasy of New York, The New York Times.
A habit is just a streak that goes on forever, Forge/Medium.
The wrong way to fight the opioid crisis, The New Yorker. One of those stories that stays with you — it’s devastating, but incredibly well written and reported.
‘No one suspected me’: women food critics dish on dining out for a living, Salon.
Books
I just finished Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid and thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, I read Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley, a memoir about working in tech startups, and I won’t be forgetting it any time soon.
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