Oscars 2022 Winners Are More Diverse Than Ever, and That Should Not Be Forgotten — Editorial

The 94th edition of the Oscars will be discussed for many years. It was one of the worst debacles in recent television history, and Will Smith’s moment was just the cherry on top of the cake. Unfortunately, all of that will bury the fact that this is the most diverse roster of Oscar winners in the history of the Academy, and the movement #OscarsSoWhite that started a few years ago may finally have a reason to rest.

 

We’ve talked a lot during the past few weeks about the several records that could be broken during last night’s ceremony, and most of them came to fruition. So instead of writing 2000 words about the embarrassment that was the ceremony overall (though it did have some highlights, as they all do), we would like to acknowledge and celebrate the actual winners.

 

As you may have heard, CODA won the Best Picture of the year, fulfilling the promise of what started a month ago with their historic win during the SAG Awards. The Power of the Dog was the clear favorite for a long time, but began to lose momentum over the past few weeks. In fact, out of twelve nominations, that movie only won one. Dune, which was the second most-nominated movie with ten, won six of them.

 

CODA is the first streaming movie to win the grand prize. Netflix’s board will definitely be running some meetings in the next few weeks to shift their strategy, as they’ve been very close to winning for many years, since 2018’s Roma, but never got there. The Power of the Dog was looking like the most likely movie to finally crack it, but ultimately lost to the company’s competitor, Apple TV+. CODA is also the third remake to ever win Best Picture, after Ben-Hur (a remake of a 1925 silent movie) and The Departed, which was a remake of the Hong Kong action thriller Infernal Affairs.

 

 

Jane Campion was the first woman to ever be nominated twice for the Best Director award. And she went on to win the award, meaning she is the third woman to win a Best Director Oscar, after Kathryn Bigelow and Chloé Zhao. This is also the second year in a row with a woman named Best Director, and the fifth in a row that doesn’t have an American-born male director win the prize.

 

As far as the acting categories went, we have, out of four winners, two white people and two people of color. Will Smith became the fifth Black actor to win the Best Actor award, which was significant, as he shared a nomination with Denzel Washington, who was the second Black actor to do that, and won his statue after the “In Memoriam” remembered Sidney Poitier, the first one to achieve it, back in 1964.

 

Ariana DeBose also became the first queer woman to win an Oscar, and the second Latina actress to win an acting award (after Rita Moreno did it for playing the same role in 1962). And finally, Troy Kotsur is now the first male deaf actor to win an Oscar, and the second deaf person to do it, after his co-star Marlee Matlin did it back in 1987.

 

 

Flee could have also made history as the first animated, non-English language film to win the Best Documentary Award. That ultimately went to Summer of Soul, a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which is not a bad alternative in terms of representation. A Spanish-made short film, The Windshield Wiper, also won the Best Animated Short award.

 

More fun facts include the fact that Billie Eilish and Finneas are the first people born in the 21st century to win an Oscar, for their song No Time to Die. CODA is also the fifth Best Picture winner in history to do a clean sweep. The last one to do it was The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2004), and before that, The Last Emperor (1988), Gigi (1958), and Wings (1929).

 

Many will remember this ceremony as the one where Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, after the comedian made an unfortunate joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair. The actress has openly discussed her loss-of-hair problem multiple times, which may have even motivated the producers to think it was appropriate to make that joke. It was not. Twitter has definitely a lot to say about it, for better or worse, but the fact of the matter is that this was an absolute embarrassment for the Academy, ABC, and everyone involved.

 

 

Will Smith later apologized to the Academy and the rest of the nominees. Moreover, the Academy issued a statement on Twitter saying they do not condone violence of any kind, and that will likely be it for the public discussion of the incident. But there will surely be a lot of meetings held in the next few weeks.

 

While this moment may have been the worse, it wasn’t the only awkward moment of the night, nor was it the only inappropriate joke the hosts made about the different couples present in the audience. And also, for what it’s worth, the ceremony was just as long even though they cut eight categories out of the telecast. And this may have been because they still played the recording of when the winners of those awards were announced during the ceremony, which meant the controversial decision made even less sense in the end. We will see the effect all of this has had when the ratings come in.

 

With all of this being said, we would like to draw a line here and move on. Congratulations to all the winners.