This year marks the whitest Oscars since 1998, with all 20 acting nominations given to white folks. Equally awesome: Zero female directors, screenwriters, or cinematographers were nominated, and according to Women’s Media Center, among the 184 nominees across 19 non-acting categories, only 35 are women.
And so the Academy Award goes to… white dudes. This stark imbalance in both racial and gender diversity in Hollywood is manifested visually on the posters that represent the biggest films of the year. More often than not, white men are selected as the representatives for the movies they star in, even when they have equally signifigant female costars.
To illustrate “Gone Girl,” Ben Affleck is more prominently pictured, despite the fact that the Gone Girl in question is the driving force behind the plot. The main poster for “Interstellar” only shows Matthew McConaughey, and wasn’t “Boyhood” as much about the women in the movie as the male characters?
–
“’Birdman’ was a great film and Michael Keaton was great in it,” Reign said, “but when the producers and studio heads were thinking about how to cast it, did Andy Garcia come up in those conversations? Was Ken Watanabe’s name mentioned? Did someone call Dennis Haysbert’s agent?… the movie could have easily been called ‘Birdwoman’ and Sandra Bullock or Demi Moore could have shined in the role.”
There’s always next year.
