Are Award Shows Still Necessary In This New Decade?

I think everyone can remember the time of #OscarsSoWhite in 2015 when the nominees were announced for the Oscars and in eight of the main categories there was not a single black actor or director nominated. Similarly, in its 91 year history, only five women directors have ever been nominated with only one woman ever winning the award. In 2020, how far have award shows come, and how necessary are they in the film industry?

Although there are so many different award shows across the world, I will be mainly be discussing the ever-controversial Oscars.

When I first read that in over 90 years that the Oscars have been running, only one woman has ever won the best director award I was completely speechless. The argument that women “don’t make good films” is not only diminishing the bigger picture, it is also an outright lie. A record number of women directed films in 2019, 10.6% of the 100 highest-grossing films of the year were directed or co-directed by women; in 2018, that number was only 4.5%. These included Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (an instant classic and commercial success), Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria), The Farewell (Lulu Wang), Queen & Slim (Melina Matsoukas), Booksmart (Olivia Wilde), and A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood (Marielle Heller).

Despite the statistics and the evidence (all of the films above were certifiably brilliant), not a single woman was nominated in the 2020 Oscars, and once again we watched as Quentin Tarantino, Todd Phillips and Martin Scorsese were all nominated for their male centric films. The only silver lining of this year’s Oscars was that Bong Joon Ho was the well-deserved winner for that category with Parasite being the first South Korean film to ever win an Oscar in any category! Despite this, the Oscars still has not come as far as we’d like.

The #OscarsSoWhite controversy shone a light on the ingrained racism within the award show with 86% of top films featuring only white actors in lead roles. This is a pattern that has dated back to the beginning of the Oscars however it was rarely discussed until the hashtag gained traction in 2015. It is unrealistic to only show, praise and nominate films that portray an all-white society. It is not an accurate depiction of the society we live in when every face on the red carpet is white. However, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs vowed to double the number of women and people of colour in the Academy’s membership by 2020 and in 2019 a record number of 13 winners of colour took home awards.

Although this seemed like progression, this year seemed to knock it back into the past again with only one actor of colour being nominated – Cynthia Erivo for her role in Harriet. Despite the start of a new decade, it seems that the Oscars still wish to exclude both women and people of colour.

This exclusion of the majority of society from the awards shows may be the reason why not only the Oscars but also the Golden Globes hit an all-time low with viewers tuning in to watch. Around 23.6 million viewers tuned in to watch the Oscars this year which is a sharp decline from 2019 in which roughly 29.5 million people viewed the show. Similarly, the Globes had hit an eight-year ratings low with only 18.3 million deciding to watch in 2020.

We could put the politics aside for a second (even though we all know that’s the main problem with the Oscars), and realise that the younger audience are no longer interested in whether a film or television show wins an award. Award shows are now tedious and seem to be getting longer every year; there is also no longer the draw of seeing a glimpse of your favourite actor and actress in a three hour show when you can catch all the best bits on Twitter the next day.

Despite award shows being elitist, sexist and racist, they will most likely be continuing for a very long time. It was announced only recently that the Oscars have introduced new regulations which will come into effect in 2025 to help with the inclusivity of under-represented groups, however whether this will actually help remains to be seen. If a lot hasn’t changed in the last five years – since the #OscarsSoWhite in 2015 – then I can’t imagine a lot changing in the next five years either.


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Written by Issy Packer

Hi, I’m Issy, the Music and Film Editor at The Everyday! I’m an English Literature graduate and have been passionate about all things to do with writing and journalism from a young age. I am interested in a number of things, including politics, feminism and music and am a firm believer that Bristol is ONE of the best cities in England for anything to do with culture, art and music. You can find me either at the cinema watching all sorts of films or trying to work my way through the long list of books I’m desperate to read.

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