To many viewers of Sunday nights Academy Awards, the Best Picture win for the tone-deaf, anachronistic racial reconciliation dramedy Green Book landed with a thud, seemingly flying in the face of so many other wins for diversity and representation throughout the evening.
The big night for Green Book immediately earned comparisons to the shock Oscar win for 2005s Crash, a similarly saccharine depiction of race in America and a Best Picture pick that has not aged well. Sunday night was also an alarming sequel to the 1989 Best Picture race, when Driving Miss Daisy (a reverse Green Book, as HuffPosts Matt Jacobs wrote Sunday ) emerged victorious over director Spike Lees seminal Do the Right Thing.
Fast-forward 30 years, and in some ways, it seems as if nothing has changed which fittingly is the thesis of Lees BlacKkKlansman, nominated for Best Picture alongside Green Book, while telling pretty much the opposite and much more realistic story about race in America.
Every time someone is driving somebody, I lose, Lee, who did finally win his first competitive Oscar of his storied career, for best adapted screenplay, quipped to reporters after the show.
His victory was one of many landmark wins for diversity and representation during Sunday nights festivities. So in spite of the shows less-than-ideal ending, lets not forget how this years Oscars were by far the most diverse in recent memory, with more than half of the 24 award categories won by at least one person of color, and significant strides for movies directed by women.
In past years, the shows producers have attempted to offset #OscarsSoWhite and the dearth of winners and nominees of color by stacking the show with diverse presenters . This years memorable presenter pairings furthered that momentum a majority of the categories were presented or co-presented by a person of color.
But even more importantly, many of this years winners finally began to reflect those diverse presenters, suggesting at least some forward movement in the academys and Hollywoods efforts to promote more inclusion and representation.
Black Panther costume designer Ruth Carter and production designer Hannah Beachler each became the first black women to win in their respective categories, and won for a Marvel superhero movie that centers on the black experience and was led by a majority-black cast. Both women thanked director Ryan Coogler, who has made inclusive hiring a priority on his projects, hopefully setting an example for other filmmakers.
Weve opened up the door, Carter told reporters after her win. Finally, the door is wide open.
Carters and Beachlers Oscars were among the seven individual wins for black artists Sunday night, including best supporting actor and actress winners Mahershala Ali and Regina King, setting a record, according to the Los Angeles Times .
While a number of critically acclaimed movies directed by women were ignored in the Best Picture and Directing categories this year, female-led movies scored big wins in other categories.
Movies directed or co-directed by women of color won in three categories, including best documentary short subject winner Period. End of Sentence, directed by Rayka Zehtabchi, who became the first Iranian-American woman to win an Oscar, according to Vices Broadly . Best documentary feature winner Free Solo was co-directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi , the daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong and Hungary, and her husband Jimmy Chin, the son of Chinese immigrants.
Best animated short went to Pixars Bao, about a Chinese immigrant mother struggling with empty nest syndrome and trying to reconnect with her son directed by Chinese-Canadian Domee Shi, the first woman ever to helm a Pixar short .
Animation notched another landmark victory, when the groundbreaking Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, featuring a half-black, half-Latino protagonist in a reinvention of the classic superhero saga, won best animated feature. The movies co-director Peter Ramsey became the first black man to win in that category.
During the teams acceptance speech, co-producer Phil Lord noted the significance of representation on screen.
When we hear that somebodys kid was watching the movie and turned to them and said, He looks like me, or They speak Spanish like us, we feel like we already won, he said.
Best foreign language film winner Roma, monumental for its grand yet intimate portrayal of a year in the life of an indigenous Mexican domestic worker, garnered several wins Sunday night for Mexican director Alfonso Cuarn.
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