The Oscar nominations are here again, and for only the second time in nearly two decades all of the acting nominations went to a group of white actors and actresses. Things hadn’t been this lily white on the acting side since 2011, and then before that in 1998. It’s maybe more damning that outside of Selma it’s not like there were many of actors of color to even be found in any of the year’s leading awards contenders (Imitation Game, Theory of Everything, Birdman, Grand Budapest Hotel, etc.). Moreover, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences snubbed Selma director Ava DuVernay, declining to make her the first African-American woman nominated for Best Director. Twitter is reacting in its typical snarky way, and there are those industry insiders who will argue this is simply an indication that the entire Academy Award voting process is screwed. It’s also perfectly possible that Oscar voters simply didn’t think that Ava DuVernay, David Oyelowo (who plays Martin Luther King, Jr.), or anyone else from Selma (outside of the guys who got a Best Original Song nomination) put forth one of the five best efforts in their category this year, which is the same conclusion the Academy clearly reached when it completely snubbed Lee Daniels’ The Butler last year (Selma did at least get a Best Picture nomination).
However, the truth of the matter is that even though the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences is now run by its first ever African-American president the actual people who vote for the Oscars are overwhelmingly old, white males. Now is a good time to look a little closer at that as well as exactly how the Academy Awards operate:
1. The best way to get into the the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences is to be nominated for an Oscar, but it’s not automatic
Better Luck Next Time, Michelle Williams
As of last year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences had 6,417 members, but the Academy never fully discloses its membership list. Instead, they reveal their list of new invitees ever year, as here in 2010 or here in 2014. It’s been assumed that the best way to secure such an invitation is to get nominated for an Oscar thus kicking in an automatic invite and membership for life. For example, Captain Phillips‘ Barkhad Abdi received an invitation last year even though he’d never been in a film before Captain Phillips. However, there have been some instances where the Academy decided that an Oscar-nominated actor’s overall body of work did not merit membership, like when it snubbed Michelle Williams even though she’d just been nominated for her performance in Brokeback Mountain (2006). They apparently could not get past the fact that she’d done all those seasons of Dawson’s Creek, concluding that Williams’ body of work to that point lacked sufficient artist merit. Slap! On top of that, Williams didn’t even win the Oscar for Brokeback Mountain anyway. Double slap! She was eventually invited to join in 2009, after she’d starred in a couple more critically praised indie films.
2. Or you can just randomly receive an invitation because the Academy thinks you’re awesome
Eddie Vedder gets to vote for Best Picture
If you look at last year’s list of invitees you’ll see that some of them have never been nominated for an Oscar, like Shawshank Redemption‘s Clancy Brown, or even come remotely close to being nominated, like Chris Rock, Clark Gregg, Rob Riggle, the directing duo Jay and Mark Duplass. Even Pearl Jam’s lead singer Eddie Vedder was invited last year based on his work writing music for Into the Wild and Eat, Prey, Love. (Sidebar: The guy from Pearl Jam wrote songs for a Julia Roberts movie. That’s something that happened. Then again, he also wrote an entire album of ukulele songs. That also happened. He’s allowed to experiment, right?)
So, how did those guys all earn invitations? Well, they may not even really know because beyond being nominated for an Oscar the only way to be invited to join the Academy is if you get two members to pen recommendations, or receive an endorsement from an academy membership committee or the organization’s staff. That means you don’t even have to seek it out. The Academy may just invite you because it thinks you’re awesome at what you do. In years past, the Academy has explained that they extend invitations to those filmmakers deemed to be among the “most exceptionally qualified names” of those who have “achieved distinction in the arts and sciences of motion pictures.” These invitations extend to every aspect of the film industry, even including studio executives, publicists, casting directors, etc.
3. Or someone died or retired leaving Academy slots open for new members
Try counting how many people are listed in the In Memoriam section of the Oscars ceremony. That used to give you a rough idea of how many new members they’d invite the next year
For a long time, the Academy preferred to keep its membership at around 6,000 members, which is problematic when you consider the fact that people are usually granted life-time membership. So, when the Academy snubbed Michelle Williams after Brokeback Mountain it might not just have been because they really, really hated Dawson’s Creek, although it’s kind of fun to think so. It might simply have been because not enough Academy members died (or retired) that year thus limiting the number of slots that were available. That was from the period when the Academy would only invite about the same number of people as those who had died, retired or resigned.
4. Some Academy members may in fact already be dead without the Academy realizing it
Bootlegging those screeners used to be so much easier before they started adding extensive watermarks
Because the Academy refuses to fully disclose its membership it’s possible that some of its members are actually deceased. The thinking is family members opt against notifying the Academy of the death so that they can continue receiving free Oscar screeners, simply voting on behalf of their dead relative. In year’s past it was feared that in certain situations the family members actually wanted to keep receiving the screeners to make money off of them via bootlegging (whatculture.com).
5. The Academy is still predominately old, white males, but they are at least trying to change that
Tom Sherak, former Academy President
In 2012, an extensive, rather damning Los Angeles Times study determined that 94% of Oscar voters were Caucasian, 77% were male, with an overall median age of 62. Moreover, of the academy’s 43-member board of governors, six were women; public relations executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs was the sole person of color. This prompted writer-director and long-time Academy governor Phil Alden Robinson to respond, “We absolutely recognize that we need to do a better job. We start off with one hand tied behind our back. If the industry as a whole is not doing a great job in opening up its ranks, it’s very hard for us to diversify our membership.” Academy President Tom Sherak was said to be looking at ways to increase diversity, but the statistics were eye-opening. Caucasians made up 90% or more of every Academy branch except actors, which was merely 88% white. In fact, both the executive and writers branches were 98% white, and males made up more than 90% of five branches, including cinematography and visual effects. Only 2% of the entire Academy was African-American, less than that for members of Latino origin. The LA Times also discovered that only half of the Academy’s actors had appeared on screen in the last years, and hundreds-including a nun, a bookstore owner and a retired Peace Corps recruiter-hadn’t worked in the film industry in decades.
That’s why it’s so sad that the overall statistics have barely changed. Even after adding so many new members over the last 2 years, 93% of current Oscar voters are Caucasian, 76% are male compared to 94% white, 77% male in 2012. In fact, the median age actually inched up from 62 to 63, according to the LA Times.
6. The only category everyone gets to vote on is Best Picture
So, if you thought Inception or Social Network should have won Best Picture in 2011, not The King’s Speech, well you have pretty much everyone to blame
Members from each individual branch of the Academy determine the votes for the nominees within their own category, e.g., actors vote for the actors, writers vote for the writers, directors vote for the directors, etc. As of 2012, the actors branch was the largest with 1,176 members while the costume designers branch was the smallest with 108 members. Just a quick little aside, the Golden Globes are determined by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, an odd cabal of nearly 90 writers. So, the absolute smallest branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences is still bigger than the entire group responsible for the Golden Globes. However, with the Academy having such imbalanced membership branches the end result is that certain nominations are pretty well devalued. For example, as of 2012 you only needed 18 votes to be nominated for costume design and 39 for video editing. Heck, even though all Academy members vote for Best Picture the voting system utilized meant it only took 301 votes for a film to secure a Best Picture nomination.
7. Some Academy members don’t even do their own voting …
In 2010, MovieFone talked to an anonymous Academy member who claimed, “I’ve heard that there are some despicable people who don’t do their own voting. At least half the fun of belonging to the Academy is getting to vote!” I’d like to assume that in that situation the person filling out the ballot is probably some assistant or family member who actually did watch all of those free DVD screeners.
8. Or even watch all of the contending movies
Ernest Borgnine famously refused to watch Brokeback Mountain even though he was technically obligated to as an active Oscar voter
It has long since been feared that many Academy members just flat out do not watch most of the contending movies, sometimes voting for movies they’ve never actually seen, perhaps simply going off of what they’ve learned through multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns. That kind of general ignorance can be seen in the 9 “Brutally Honest” Oscar ballots The Hollywood Reporter published (and IndieWire rounded up) in which 9 anonymous voters provided a window into their voting process for last year’s Oscars:
Best Picture
#7 (Executive): Look, I’ve lived long enough to know what it was like for a person to be a black person in America. I mean, it’s not anything that I’m not aware of.
Best Director
#1 (Director): [Alfonso] Cuaron was part of a committee of technicians who made that movie, and I have seen things at the planetarium that were at least as impressive.
Best Supporting Actress
Best Original Screenplay
Best Animated Feature
Best Documentary
#7 (Executive): My friends tell me “The Square” is one of the best documentaries that they ever saw, but I haven’t had a chance to see it.