Why EEAAO's Success Shows the Oscars Are Still Long Overdue for Comprehensive Change

Despite a historic night, the Academy continues to overlook marginalized talent at an alarming rate.

Image: A24

Fans of A24’s breakout hit were abuzz with anticipation.

On Hollywood’s biggest night, Daniel Kwan’s and Daniel Scheinert’s cultural touchstone film Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAAO) took home seven wins. This victory made it the most awarded Best Picture since Slumdog Millionaire fourteen years ago.

Moreover, the Daniels’ mind-melding multiverse masterpiece won Best Picture, the evening’s top prize. 

And it almost pulled off a full sweep in the acting categories, too, with Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ke Huy Quan earning Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

Besides The Daniels’ EEAAO wins, S. S. Rajamouli’s RRR became the first feature from India to win an Oscar for Best Original Song with the smash hit “Naatu Naatu,” clocking in over 130 million YouTube views.

 Kartiki Gonsalves’ The Elephant Whisperers, in which a South Indian couple devotes their lives to caring for an orphaned elephant, won Best Documentary Short Film.

South Asian fans exulted in Hollywood's remarkable evening that finally acknowledged their cinematic contributions. 

The evening was a momentous occasion for Asian representation on the silver screen.  

While we laud the achievements of EEAAO, RRR, and The Elephant Whisperers, we must take a step back and view their success in a larger context.

Are these record-breaking wins a sign of the Academy's progress, or are they just another isolated, honorary gesture from an organization known for its biases and lack of awareness?

The Academy’s Storied History of Exclusion

It’s hard to believe Yeoh is the first Asian woman to win Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Her singular landmark achievement, however, is an anomaly in an industry that often disregards the BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled communities.

In the Academy’s ninety-five years of existence, only five Black men have won Best Actor.

• Sidney Poitier (Lilies of the Field, 1963)

• Denzel Washington (Training Day, 2001)

• Jamie Fox (Ray, 2004)

• Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, 2006)

• Will Smith (King Richard, 2021)

Halle Berry remains the only Black woman to win Best Actress for Monster’s Ball in 2002, making Yeoh the second woman of color ever to win the award.

While Rita Moreno and Ariana DeBose both won Best Supporting Actress for their West Side Story performances—sixty years apart—no Latina woman has yet to be awarded the Best Actress prize. 

BIPOC and women fare far worse in The Best Director category.

Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, 2014, and The Revenant, 2015), (The Shape of Water, 2017), and Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, 2013 and Roma, 2018) are the only three Latinos ever to win Best Director. 

Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, 2008), Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, 2020), and Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog, 2021) are the only three women to win.

No Latina woman or Indigenous filmmaker has ever been nominated in the category.

The struggle is also real for queer and disabled communities.

• Best Picture winner, CODA, is the first film to feature multiple deaf characters played by actors who are also hearing impaired.

• Jodie Foster is the only Oscar-winning lead actress to come out as a lesbian during her lifetime.

• A cis-gender actor has performed every transgender character nominated for a best acting award. 

The almost one-hundred-year-old Academy aims to transform itself. However, its paltry history regarding inclusion reminds us that the sole constant is an unwillingness to change. 

We can bemoan the Academy for shutting out The Woman King, Till, and Nope, chastise it for not nominating a woman for Best Director, or take offense at Stephanie Hsu being the only openly gay actor nominated this year.

However, it is more important we understand why sustained progress is impossible, given the Academy’s current state of affairs.

Image: A24

The Academy risks losing what it values the most: its esteemed reputation.

The Academy, which exists to reward and validate a small, curated group, is jeopardizing the very thing it values the most: power. If viewers feel ignored for too long, people will stop watching, the Academy will lose revenue, and its influence will diminish.

To put this into perspective, let’s examine Mark Mylod’s dark satire, The Menu.

The Menu is an American horror comedy satire about a group of elitist diners attending an exclusive destination restaurant. 

Mylod based his poignant takedown of the rich on exclusive world-renowned restaurants such as The Willows Inn and Noma. 

The Willows Inn closed permanently due to numerous allegations of racism, sexual harassment, and wage theft. 

Noma announced its eventual closing, citing an inability to maintain a large staff of unpaid interns, another way of admitting years of free labor.

The Menu reveals that the poorly built houses of immorality and arrogance will reach a breaking point and fail.

The Academy, like these fine dining institutions, satisfies a wealthy majority-white constituency whose outdated perspectives don’t always align with the present-day world.

Entertainment Weekly polled an anonymous Academy voting panel, and many of their responses speak volumes.

Here, a secret ballot voter criticizes the blowback from the surprise Andrea Riseborough nomination.

"It's not fair for you to start suddenly beating a frying pan and say [they're] ignoring Black people. They're really not, they're making an effort. Maybe there was a time 10 years ago when they were, but they have, of all the high-profile things, been in the forefront of wanting to be inclusive. Viola Davis and the lady director need to sit down, shut up, and relax. You didn't get a nomination — a lot of movies don't get nominations. Viola, you have one or two Oscars, you're doing fine." - EntertainmentWeekly.com 

This demeaning rant implies Black talent should be content with the small amount of support they receive from voters. The Hollywood insider invoked a perceived racial trope, “frying pan,” to emphasize their frustration and intolerance.

“Sit down, shut up, and relax” also points to misogynistic views that exist among some established older voters.

While the EEAAO wins are historic, they’re short-lived victories in an organization where diversity and inclusion aren’t always imperative amongst a majority white cisgender voting base.

The stars aligned when a film with a predominantly Asian cast that movie-goers loved was also the year’s most awarded. 

In a typical year, the disparity between what people admire and what the Academy values is so vast we need a way to close it.

And what is the purpose of the Academy if it has no audience beyond the Hollywood elite?

The Andrea Riseborough controversy speaks to a bigger problem. 

When the Academy revealed Andrea Riseborough's Best Actress nomination for her role in To Leslie, it caused a stir.

Michael Morris, To Leslie’s director, and his wife, veteran actress Mary McCormack, lobbied on behalf of Riseborough to secure her nomination.

The power couple leveraged its A-list, well-connected friend network to orchestrate a questionable last-minute campaign, according to Vulture.

Riseborough beat Viola Davis’s (The Woman King) and Danielle Deadwyler’s (Till) powerful performances for the fifth and final slot in the category. 

These two Black actresses delivered career-defining performances, recounting stories of immense importance, yet the Academy failed to acknowledge them. 

Davis and Deadwyler played by the Academy’s strict rules and still found themselves on the outside looking in.

“What does it say that the Black women who did everything the institution asks of them—luxury dinners, private academy screenings, meet-and-greets, splashy television spots and magazine profiles—are ignored when someone who did everything outside of the system is rewarded?” - Robert Daniels via The LA Times

Morris and McCormack didn’t champion a worthy cause; they endorsed exclusivity at the expense of deserving, diverse talent.

BIPOC people face an uphill battle. They receive limited support, and the Academy doesn’t value their stories.

For example, the anonymous voter referenced earlier, a renowned award-winning actor, also confessed to not having seen The Woman King, yet still criticized the film’s lead, Viola Davis, and its director, Gina Prince-Bythewood. This also brings to light the long-term issue of voters not watching films that feature BIPOC talent.

Perhaps if Morris and McCormack had advocated for Davis and Deadwyler, the unnamed constituent might have held a different opinion regarding these excellent Black actresses and their extraordinary films.

This raises an important question: 

Has an influential white contingent in Hollywood ever publicly campaigned on behalf of a person of color?

Image: A24

Today’s Academy has outlived its relevance.

In 2023, an Asian cast winning an Oscar shouldn’t be an anomaly.

When will the LGBTQ+, Latina, disabled, and other marginalized communities receive their moment of glory?

According to history, not for at least another several decades.

A perfect instance is Berry and Yeoh's winning of Best Actress awards, spaced 21 years apart, while their Bond Girls roles were only five years apart. The Academy can't, or won't, keep up with the steady progress happening on the big screen.

Genuine change will occur when we diversify who’s behind the camera (filmmakers, producers, financiers), who yields the pen (screenwriters and critics), and who guards the gates (studio executives and major award organizations). 

The Academy has an international platform, and yet it balks at keeping up with the changing needs of a more diverse world.

For example, the Academy featured zero South Asian dancers during its Oscar performance of RRR’s breakout-hit song Naatu Naatu. 

Representation matters, and it’s critical Hollywood gets it right.

A broader, more inclusive path to regularly honor illustrious talent lies ahead, with or without the Academy.

Boundless, diverse talent exists if you know where to look. These 8 Black actresses delivered breathtaking performances last year. 

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