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While having five previous winners present in the acting categories once again went down well at the 2024 Oscars as it did in 2009, the Best Actress category will present a challenge for optics if it becomes an annual tradition. In the 96 years of the Oscars’ existence, there are only two women of color who have ever won the award. Would Halle Berry, the only black Best Actress winner, and Michelle Yeoh, the only Asian Best Actress winner, trade hosting duties year after year? Otherwise, it would be an all-white presenting lineup.
It’s not like other categories have a perfect history of diversity either, but the problem is much less serious. Part of the reason the segment works is that it sends a subtle message that any type of person can win. If there were only women of one race up there, that intended message would be lost.
That’s the main reason there are so many passionate feelings about “The Flower Moon Killers” star Lily Gladstone, the first Native American to be nominated for Best Actress, who lost the Oscar to the “Poor Poor” actress. things”, Emma Stone, who had already won an Oscar before. . Again, it took 96 years for a Native American to have the chance to win Best Actress; It took Emma Stone only seven years to gain the category for the second time.
To be clear, the conclusion should not be that the “Poor Things” actress has anything to apologize for. Opinions on who should be nominated and win an Oscar are entirely subjective. The Oscars are a peer-voted awards body, and Stone was ultimately chosen by a consensus that preferred her performance to those of her four fellow nominees. All that said, it’s not crazy that people feel that if the win didn’t happen to Gladstone, it may never happen to another Native American actress again, given the category’s history. Try to name an upcoming movie with Oscar buzz that has another Native American woman as the lead. Therein lies the question.
In terms of the racial makeup of this year’s Oscar winners as a whole, there was still quite a bit of diversity. For example, “American Fiction” filmmaker Cord Jefferson, “The Holdovers” star Da’Vine Joy Randolph and “The Last Repair Shop” co-director Kris Bowers were the three black winners out of 14 nominations. A win ratio similar to last year.
The diversity statistics highlighted since then take a closer look at nationality. Between the Best Animated Feature award for “The Boy and the Heron” and the Best Visual Effects award for “Godzilla Minus One,” the 96th Oscars was a big year for Japan. Special mention for Kiyoko Shibuya from the “Godzilla” team, who is now the first woman of color to win in that category.
Elsewhere, Best Documentary winner “20 Days in Mariupol” gave Ukraine its first Oscar, and Cillian Murphy became the first Irish-born person to win Best Actor. And looking at the age diversity, Billie Eilish, 22, and Finneas O’Connell, 26, winners of Best Original Song for “What Was I Made For?” of “Barbie,” became the two youngest people to receive an Academy Award twice.
All that said, the first year the Oscars’ inclusion standards went into effect resulted in a pretty good year for gender parity among winners, but not so good on the other diversity fronts.