New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

But what of women filmmakers specifically? You likely know that only four women have received Best Director nods and only Kathyrn Bigelow has won. Mahnola Dargis recently wrote in the New York Times that when Bigelow won in 2009, only 7% of movies were directed by women, and that she hoped Bigelow’s win would change this. Today, however, only 7.6% of movies are directed by women, as Dargis reported, so the problem appears to remain intractable. The opportunities for women to direct are simply not there. Indeed, no woman cinematographer has ever taken home an Oscar. Given that cinematography is one of two obvious stepping stones for women to become directors (the other being editing), it should be no surprise that few women directors are to be seen. Women aren’t even being trained as directors. Hollywood’s women problem, thus, spans all aspects of moviemaking.

The other story stirring the pot in the Oscar world this year is the possibility that if Angelina gets in as a Best Director nominee, she could make history along Ava DuVarney if the latter also finds herself a contender for Selma. The possibility that for the first time ever two women would be nominated in the same year is tantalizing and may prove too tempting for the quirky-minded and likely liberal Directors Branch to resist. Cherry on top: DuVarney would be the first non-white female nominated in this prestigious category.

The immediate political question that these facts engender is what role “affirmative action” of sort should play in giving out awards. Should DuVarney get more votes because few women and few racial minorities get recognized by the industry and the Oscars? Should Viola Davis have won Best Actress over Meryl Streep because Meryl had two statuettes at that point, double the total (now triple) the total number of Best Actress awards won by African-American women (the lone win going to Halle Berry)? When Barbara Streisand exclaimed, “The time has come” before revealing that Kathryn Bigelow had become the first woman to win Best Director, was she misguidedly injecting politics into the Oscars? And when the people behind the 12 Years a Slave Oscar push ran “It’s Time” ads (no film directed by an African American had won Best Picture before last year) were they unfairly “playing the race card”?

A definitive or even remotely satisfying answer to these questions would not be reached if I devoted the entire rest of the awards season to exploring them. I will offer a few conflicting thoughts that I have always had about this topic, on which I remain mostly but not entirely undecided. First, in my ideal world, awards would be given out strictly on merit. I despise the “overdue” Oscars, or the Oscars given because a good campaign was run with a cute little dog (The Artist). Indeed, prominent conservative racial minorities argue - not without some merit, in my honest view - that giving recognition not on the basis of merit but on the basis of the person’s gender or race demeans the award and its recipient. When we look back, wouldn’t we prefer to say: “that movie won because it was the best” and not “that movie won because ‘it was time’”? Worse, should an “objectively” better role or movie lose out to one involving women or a minority?

Continued:       1       2       3       4