Well folks, they finally, finally, FINALLY did it.
After years of clinging to safety, backtracking like crazy, and generally disappointing us all with their innate predictability, the Academy took a step outside of its zone of bourgeoisie comfort and did the unthinkable: it made a correct decision by crowning South Korean thriller Parasite the night’s biggest winner.
Bong Joon-Ho’s masterful tale of class relations swept up in almost all the major categories it was nominated for, including Best Director for Joon-Ho, Best Original Screenplay for Joon-Ho and co-writer Han Jin-won, and Best International Feature Film.
Most spectacularly, Parasite won Best Picture, making it the first film in any language other than English to get the top prize.
Barriers were shattered. History was made. And all Bong Joon-Ho wanted to do was get to the bar (he ended his Best Director speech with a quick, “I will drink until next morning”).
In a moment of unabashed opinion, let me just say that the awards are so very deserved. The movie is incredibly well-shot, beautifully acted, and perhaps one of the most original pieces of storytelling to come along in some time, making haunting and visceral commentary on growing economic inequalities that are relevant around the world. It is a perfectly-crafted story captured in a perfectly-crafted film–everything the winner of Best Picture should be.
So why is it so shocking that it actually won?
Well, there are many possible reasons. But perhaps the most overwhelming of them all is Hollywood’s utter narrow-mindedness.
To begin with the obvious, it’s no secret that the Academy has had a bit of rocky road with a lack of diversity in their nominations. Only 31 per cent of voters are women, and an even more distressingly little 16 per cent are racial minorities. With such an overwhelmingly white voting population, it’s no wonder the awards have been raked over the coals in recent years as moviegoers become wiser to their patronizing shenanigans.
But the Oscars’ diversity problem runs much deeper than diversity of skin colour and/or sex. What the Academy ultimately lacks diversity in is worldview.
Until this year, there has been almost a complete inability to appreciate the cinematic styles, stories, and perspectives of any place outside North America and the occasional European country. Even the segregation of Best Picture category from the Best International Film speaks to a not-so-subtle hierarchy: films from non-English speaking countries may be good, but they aren’t good enough to even compete for the top prize. The Academy is so utterly obsessed with and stuck in their deeply Western-centric views that it can’t–or simply isn’t willing–to look outside what they find “palatable.”
Let’s look at this year’s Best Picture nominees alone.
With such an overwhelmingly white voting population, it’s no wonder the awards have been raked over the coals in recent years as moviegoers become wiser to their patronizing shenanigans.
There was Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a gory blast-from-the-past that was not only pretty explicitly misogynistic in its treatment of women but made a racially stereotypical caricature out of Bruce Lee that we’ve all, for some reason, decided to just look past. There was 1917, a two-hour long one-shot of World War I carnage that is yet another war movie glorifying the Western-world’s utter fascination with the self-anointed heroism of its history. Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit is also set during a European World War, albeit taking a more satirical lens to a super white and prejudiced Nazi Germany; somewhat ironically, Waititi, as an indigenous Maori man from New Zealand, was the only other non-white filmmaker this year, yet compounded this by playing one perhaps the biggest bigots of all-time: Adolf Hitler.
Ford v Ferrari, Marriage Story, The Irishman, Little Women, Joker–these are all uber Western tales comprised of mostly white casts. In fact, Parasite was the only nominee this year that wasn’t set in either North America or Europe. And if you look down the line of Best Picture nominees from the past five years, then you will get very similar results (with the exception of last year’s Roma, which very well paved the way for Parasite’s foreign-language award success).
Now, I’m not necessarily saying that these aren’t well-done films. I myself have enjoyed most of them, and it’s unquestionably true that there is a vast diversity of perspectives within America or Europe themselves.
It is, however, a very clear symptom of the self-obsession the Academy has with itself. It is utterly and completely in love with telling stories about those in the business, or their politicians, or the tastemakers and thrill-seekers that have gripped them. It fetishizes stories about those living on the margins in their own countries and tokenizes their experiences while paying them lip-service with meaningless acceptance speeches and Instagram posts. It can’t stomach those who don’t contain themselves within known cultural tropes.
That’s why, I can’t say that my pessimism about the Academy has really ebbed that much. When Moonlight won Best Picture in 2017 in the wake of #Oscarssowhite the year before, it offered a brief moment of hope until The Shape of Water won the following year, a film with only one non-white cast member that is steeped in themes of national security–something Americans absolutely love. Rubbing salt in the wound, Green Book won in 2019, an interracial buddy comedy that attempted to tackle race themes but ultimately failed due to the fact it was told from the white character’s perspective, automatically making it unqualified to discuss what it is like to be a person of colour in the States.
So yes, the Academy was correct in awarding Parasite the night’s top honour, because it was by all measures the best film of the year. And yes, this was a distinct shift in the typical voting patterns of the event.
But was this change only temporary? Have we actually witnessed a meaningful parting with the Oscar’s Western-centric infatuation with itself and an opening up of a whole new appreciation of film? Or was this just a blip in the motion picture landscape, a mere ripple in an ultimately unchanging fabric?
We’ll wait and see.
Feature image screenshot.
