{Image via Oscars.org}
There are plenty of reasons to get excited for the 86th annual Academy Awards this Sunday. Host Ellen DeGeneres is sure to delight. Oscars fashion is the pinnacle of award season. Oh, and Jennifer Lawrence will be there again – hopefully craving some Taco Bell.
But we were reminded in several places this week how the film industry’s highest annual honors fail to acknowledge the contribution of women and women’s roles. Let’s remember only three films with women in leading roles even got nominated for Best Picture and none of those honorees were directed by women. As IndieWire points out, there’s not a woman nominated in the directing category and woman has never been nominated for cinematography – EVER. It’s no surprise to us coming from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – which is predominantly comprised of old, white men.
We’ll burst your Oscar bubble in a few handy charts:
{Image via Newsweek}
In a great piece for Newsweek, Amelia Showalter sought to quantify the Oscars’ “woman problem.” She tried to determine which films the Academy deemed “Best Picture” worthy – men’s or women’s stories? In order to determine which films were likely centered on one-gender, Showalter focused on Best Picture nominees where only actresses or only actors were nominated in the leading and supporting actor category.
“If Oscar had no gender bias, we’d expect similar stats for these two extremes of the spectrum,” Showalter writes. But she actually found:
- Only 83 films nominated for Best Picture had nominations in the actress categories and no nominations in the actor category.
- In contrast, there have been 146 Best Picture nominees with nominations for actors and zero actresses.
- Of the 83 female-centered films, only six have won Best Picture – less than six percent.
- Male-centered films are more likely to take home the gold at 29/146 or 20 percent.
Showalter notes the differences are even greater for the films that have multiple nominations for either actresses or actors. “Multiple great performers must mean it’s a pretty great movie, right? Well, yes, if those performers are men. Out of all the best picture nominees with multiple nominated actors (but zero nominated actresses), 44 percent ended up winning the big prize. Only 7 percent of the best picture nominees with multiple nominated actresses (but no nominated actors) went on to win. That is worse than the 9 percent win rate for films with no acting nominations at all.”
If that’s not enough to turn your glamorous Oscar bash into a hate-watch, the Huffington Post created an interactive graphic about which roles for men and women are more likely to bring home the gold statue.
If you’re a man, play a historical figure like last year’s winner Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln. If you’re a woman gunning for a trophy, play a mother, wife, girlfriend, or daughter opposite a leading man. Do male actors take home Oscars for playing boyfriends or husbands? Nope. It’s not even a category for them. They have law or military roles and “career achievement,” according to the HuffPo’s chart. In addition to being wives, mothers, girlfriends and daughters, women win for playing mistresses, prostitutes, housekeepers and maids.
Guess there’s a reason the coveted trophy is a statue of a man…
{Image via FilmMagic}
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