How Will the Oscars Reflect This Moment in Hollywood?
For all the hullaballoo about misplaced envelopes and mistaken winners, it’s sometimes hard to remember that the Best Picture Oscar went to Moonlight earlier this year. It was a shockingly relevant choice for an awards body that’s usually anything but: An artful exploration of identity and sexuality with a gay black protagonist, made by an indie studio for $4 million, defeated the expected victor, La La Land, a glossy paean to show business. Coming after years of controversy over the homogeneity of the Academy Awards’ nominees, the win felt like a transformational moment for the Oscars—in terms of recognizing not just diversity in art, but also films that resonate with the wider moment in American culture.
The upcoming Academy Awardsor Steven Spielberg’s newspaper drama ? Or will the Academy reward a less typical worklike Jordan Peele’s subversive horror film or Greta Gerwig’s fizzy coming-of-age dramedy ? And how might the Oscars’ choices reflect pressing political and social issues within the industry and beyond?
