‘Inclusive’ Hollywood snubs female directors for Oscars: ‘Congratulations to all the male nominees’

Hollywood celebrities may preach diversity and inclusivity, but they seem to have trouble recognizing such things with their awards as this year’s Academy Award nominations for Best Director show.

Actress Issa Rae, who was helping to announce the Oscar nominations, took a dig at the recognition of the nominees by saying after their names were announced: “congratulations to those men.” 

There's little doubt that Quentin Tarantino, Todd Phillips, Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-ho, and Sam Mendes created good films.

But it was an especially odd year for no females to be nominated for the Best Director Award since there were so many critically acclaimed films directed by female artists, including ‘Little Women’ from Greta Gerwig. Gerwig was arguably the biggest snub since her film earned nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress (Soairse Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Florence Pugh), Best Original Score, and Best Costume Design. With that many nominations, it was a bit of a surprise to see Gerwig’s name not pop up as a nominee.

Other women directors seen as snubbed include Lorene Scafaria for ‘Hustlers’ and Merielle Heller for ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,’ a film which earned a Best Actor nomination for Tom Hanks.

Kathryn Bigelow remains the only woman to win a Best Director Oscar in the 92 year history of the Academy Awards, something some critics were quick to point out in light of the new nominees. 

Bigelow won the award for 2009’s ‘The Hurt Locker.’

To make matters worse, only five women total have been nominated in the Best Director category.

Whether the male nominees were actually more worthy of their nominations than the acclaimed female directors of the year is also up for debate. Martin Scorsese was nominated for a movie — ‘The Irishman’ — that has special effects outshined by a YouTuber using free software, and ‘Joker’ director Todd Phillips is earning plenty of criticism for being nominated for a film that is essentially one long homage to the work of Scorsese. 

But still the choices seemed puzzling in the light of Hollywood's self-promoted woke image making the Academy Awards a prime example of why diverse industry is nothing but a mirage. 

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