This year’s crop of Bafta nominations are a dispiriting start to the decade. With its glaringly white, overwhelmingly male and thuddingly boring choices, its voting body of film industry members seem to have a limited understanding of “excellence”. All 20 acting nominations have been given to white performers: Scarlett Johansson and Margot Robbie received two nominations each, with Robbie claiming two spots in the best supporting actress category (a real slap in the face). No women appear in the best director category, and none of this year’s best film nominees were directed by women.
It’s not at all surprising, but it is outrageous. Consider exceptional female-directed films such as Atlantics, Booksmart, Clemency, The Farewell, For Sama, Harriet, Honey Boy, Hustlers, Little Women, The Nightingale, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and The Souvenir. Recall performances from Lupita Nyong’o, Jennifer Lopez, Cynthia Erivo, Alfre Woodard, Marianne Jean-Baptiste. The work is there and should speak for itself, but institutions aren’t listening. The same small pool of “talent” continues to be rewarded.
Things are a little more hopeful in the juried categories – outstanding British debut, British short film, British short animation and the EE rising star award – suggesting that a more diverse selection committee can lead to a more diverse slate of nominees. Four of the five best short film nominees are directed by women (Azaar, Kamali, Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone [If You’re a Girl] and The Trap); three of the five rising stars are people of colour (Awkwafina, Kelvin Harrison Jr and Micheal Ward). Yet confining non-white talent to the “rising” category is in itself patronising; people of colour are allowed to “emerge” but rarely become “established”.
Awards campaigns are expensive to run and so risk-averse by nature, but distributors would do well to advocate more fiercely. One of the year’s most disappointing omissions is Joanna Hogg’s superlative memoir, The Souvenir. That film is also missing from the Academy’s longlist of eligible films, the implication being that A24 did not submit it for Oscar consideration either.
What’s worse is that the statistics don’t appear to be changing. In the last decade, only one best film nominee was directed by a woman (Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty). That’s one in 50 films. Despite the popular rhetoric of diversity, the conversation remains stagnant. In 2020, I am no longer interested in the virtue signalling and the discourse around diversity. Voters, viewers and other members of the industry should be demanding solutions to the problem.
In an attempt at damage control, Bafta have already released a statement expressing their disappointment regarding the nominations’ “infuriating” lack of diversity. A better strategy would be greater transparency about the race, gender and sexual orientation of its members, and a clear, actionable commitment to expand that membership. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did in 2018, inviting 928 new members in a bid to change its voting demographic. Bafta need to do the same.
