The 2020 Academy Awards nominations were announced early Monday morning. With the reveal came some praise for another fantastic year of movies and also plenty of criticism pertaining to snubs in certain categories.
Twitter reacts to the 2020 Academy Award nominations
After Monday’s announcements, a few films stood out. Leading the pack with nominations was the box office smash hit “Joker,” Quentin Tarantino’s ode to 1960’s Tinsel Town “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood,” and the recently released World War I epic “1917.” All three directors for each film — Tarantino, Todd Phillips and Sam Mendes — were nominated in the Best Director category, which also included Martin Scorsese and Bong Joon-ho for “The Irishman” and “Parasite.”
What was noticeably left out of the Best Director category was a female nominee. This was especially apparent in the case of Greta Gerwig’s hit film “Little Women,” which was released on Christmas Day. Although this widely praised remake was nominated for Best Picture, Gerwig was snubbed as a director. Even Oscar Nominations Presenter Issa Rae called out the blatant lack of a female presence in that category, finishing her spiel with four words: “Congratulations to those men.”
Social media inevitably was also enraged by the lack of women and the continuous lack of diversity across a variety of categories.
Arianna Davis tweeted, “I don’t know why I still get my hopes up about the Oscar nominations. NO love for Jennifer Lopez, Queen & Slim, or any female directors. And the only Black actor nominated was for… you guessed it: a slavery movie. And they had Issa Rae and John Cho present to… distract us?”
“I’ll join in the chorus of voices expressing how disheartening it is that only 2 of 20 #Oscars2020 acting noms and 1 of 5 directing noms are to people of color. (No female directors.) Also: all major categories are dominated by folks who’ve already won or been nominated a bunch,” tweeted Anthony Rapp.
The lack of female directors being nominated by the Academy Awards can be summed up by numbers: Only five have ever been nominated in the 92 years the awards show has been around and only one, Kathryn Bigelow for 2009’s “The Hurt Locker” has ever won.
As for diversity, that has been an apparent issue almost every year for the Academy, which is still mainly white and male-dominated. This also comes off the heels of major backlash for the BAFTA nominations that came out last week and were also called out for a lack of diversity, kick-starting the hashtag #BaftasSoWhite, similar to the Oscar hashtag started in 2015 and 2016.
Still, there were some wins and surprises, which were also praised on social media.
Former President Barack Obama praised the nomination of “American Factory,” which was distributed by his and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground Productions.
“Glad to see American Factory’s Oscar nod for Best Documentary. It’s the kind of story we don’t see often enough and it’s exactly what Michelle and I hope to achieve with Higher Ground. Congrats to the incredible filmmakers and entire team!”
BET also tweeted and showed their support for Matthew Berry’s short film “Hair Love,” which also starred Issa Rae.
“Congratulations to ‘Hair Love’ and @MatthewACherry (and the whole entire team) on their incredible #Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short. #RepresentationMatters #OscarNoms #HairLove”
Social media users all have their own opinions on snubs and surprises, but what has been made apparent is that with platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, people will always voice their opinions and hopefully, will be heard.
The 92nd Academy Awards will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Feb. 9.
