Continuing from my last post about the Oscars, in this one I look at this year’s Oscar nominations. In particular, I focus on the number of people of color that have been nominated in the “big” categories (i.e., Best actor / actress, best supporting actor / actress and best director). I analyze the changes in the context of my previous analysis where I looked at the diversity in the 2017 nominations compared to the 2016 and 2015 nominations. 2016 was the year when steps were publicly made to diversify and increase the number of Academy Award voters, especially in light of the #OscarSoWhite hashtag that trended after the 2015 and 2016 nomination announcement as well as the Oscar boycott in 2016.
Last year as well, new voters were ushered in, as a way to continue diversifying the voting committee (Read the full report on the Oscar class of 2017). So what did this change bring in terms of nominations for people of color? Based on the Oscar nominations that were released on the 23rd January, we can see that:
Total number of people of color nominated reduced from 7 to 5
In the 2017 nominations, we saw a big rise from zero people of color nominated in 2015 and 2016 to a total of 7 in the five big categories (i.e., Best actor / actress, best supporting actor / actress and best director). From the figure below we see that in 2018, this number decreased to 5 – which is still better than the 2015 and 2016 nominations. In addition, this year people of color are represented in the best actor, best director and best supporting actress categories.
A woman this year has been nominated in the Best Director category
In light of the women movement in Hollywood, I also looked at the gender distribution in in the best director category. Here, we see that in this year’s nominations, one woman was nominated. Although it is only just one, it is an improvement from 2015, 2016, and 2017 where zero women were nominated.
This year’s nominations thus showed a decrease but still a presence of people of color in the big actor categories. In addition, it showed an increase of one woman nominated in the best director category. As more changes and movements keep happening, I look forward to seeing how these impact the diversity in nominations and opportunities in Hollywood.
Also published on Medium.