The Gender Gap in Film
Check out these two articles, both of which show the gap between awards for women and men in the Oscars over time in visual format.
“The Oscars’ 92-year gender gap, visualised”
“Maybe Those Are Just the Best Movies This Year”: #WhiteMan’s Oscar in Context.”
The Guardian‘s statistic about the lack of awards for female cinematographers was particularly illuminating.
In addition to showing what female-driven films could have been honored but weren’t over the years, Relatively Entertaining covers the diversity of voices in film, how we’ve regressed since a high point in the 40s in honoring women’s stories–even if told by men. The post also highlights how seldom black actresses are repeatedly honored for their work: “For that matter, it’s a strange quirk of Oscar that of the 35 times a black woman has received acting Oscar nomination, only three (Whoopi Goldberg, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer) have been nominated more than once, and only Spencer has been nominated after winning her award.”
I wonder how long Academy voters could sustain the fiction that women’s films just haven’t been good enough yet to get awards after viewing the articles’ startling graphics. I wonder if the lack of repeat nominations for women (and women of color in particular) will finally bring home just how much has to change.
