Yannis Tzioumakis
Reader in Film and Media Industries
Department of Communication and Media
Another year, another Oscar ceremony, another celebration of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science embracing diversity. This time it was the visibility and recognition bestowed upon the Asian and Asian American communities, with actors Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan receiving Academy Awards in the Actress in a Leading Role and Actor in a Supporting Role categories, respectively, and screenwriter-director Daniel Kwan (together with Daniel Scheinert) winning Oscars in the Original Screenplay and Directing categories. These were just four of the seven awards that went to Everything Everywhere All at Once, which also received the coveted Best Picture Oscar, accepted by another Asian American, producer Jonathan Wang, on behalf of the diverse group of people involved in the production.
And those awards were not the only evidence of diversity-in-the-house in a typically glamorous Oscar night. Stephanie Hsu and Hong Chau were two other Asian American actresses nominated in the Supporting Role category, only to lose to 64-year old established actress Jamie Lee Curtis. A different type of diversity icon, Jamie Lee Curtis has attracted significant attention in recent years with her “pro-ageing” campaign and her candid views about being an ageing actress in a Hollywood that is obsessed with youth. On her way to the award, Lee Curtis also beat Angela Bassett, also 64, one of the most celebrated African American actresses who has portrayed strong Black women throughout her career.
And then there was Canadian writer-director and activist Sarah Polley, who won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking, a film that tells the story of serially abused women in a religious colony, beating industry “heavyweight” Rian Johnson, and international literature giant Kazuo Ishiguro.
Beyond race and gender, films such as All Quiet in the Western Front, winner of three awards and The Banshees of Inisherin, no awards but huge visibility for its Irish actors in the various acting categories, pointed to some of the great work that had been taking place outside the US, in Germany and Ireland, while Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, an Oscar winner in 2017 with The Shape of the Water, this time received the award for Best Animated Feature with yet another telling of the story of Pinocchio.
It looks like that the Academy’s quest to diversify its membership, and through that reform the ways Oscar voting takes place, has been working. Back in the summer of 2020, and in light of yet another year of awards when only one non-white nominee in the acting categories had sparkled new #Oscars So White protests, the Academy had invited 819 new members to join its ranks, a large number of whom represented a variety of diverse groups. This measure seemed to have produced immediate results, as in the 2021 ceremony China-born Chloé Zhao won the Oscar for Best Director, South Korean Youn Yuh-jung won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, African American Daniel Kaluuya won in the Best Supporting Actor category, while young British writer Emerald Fennell won the Original Screenplay award with Promising Young Woman, against industry stalwart Aaron Sorkin and his screenplay for The Trial of the Chicago Seven.
However, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic and with much fewer films released that year, these steps forward and the results they seemingly produced hardly registered with the wider public. Similarly, a year later, in March 2022, and as the world had slowly started to grapple with life after the pandemic, the victory of CODA, Jane Campion’s triumph in the Best Director category and Troy Kutsur’s and Ariana De Bose’s wins in the two Acting in a Supporting Role categories, were completely overshadowed by Will Smith’s famous slap on stage. That incident also cast a very dark shadow on Smith’s own victory in the Actor in a Leading Role category. What could have been a moment of real triumph for racial diversity and visibility for disabled people, became known for the practising of violence.
So, in this third year in a row, can we really talk about long standing changes that have made Hollywood more open and diverse?
Media outlets love to examine diversity through a focus on actors and directors, placing their emphasis on questions of race, gender, sexuality and disability. But there are other ways to inquire about this issue, ways that can perhaps show us a more complicated picture. One of these ways is to look at which companies are behind these films that employ all this diverse talent and make films that embrace themes of inclusivity and equality. Is it the Hollywood studios that have dominated American cinema for over a century? Is it the streaming companies that have rapidly ascended into major industry players in the last decade? Is it smaller independent companies that have managed to find a niche in an otherwise entertainment conglomerate dominated industry? Is it foreign companies that have exploited global conditions and broken into the coveted American market?
Looking at the major films in this year’s Oscars can be an eye opener. Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans and Buzz Luhrmann’s Elvis seem to be the only films with multiple nominations that were released by major studios (Universal and Warner Bros., respectively), but neither is particularly diverse in its representations. Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever were also films financed and/or released by major studios (Paramount, Disney and Disney, respectively) but besides appearing on the Best Picture nominee list, they were otherwise considered only for technical awards, which explains why neither Tom Cruise nor James Cameron attended the ceremony. And while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever can be considered a diversity embracing film on account of the ways it imagines “black power,” its status as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe makes it more an exercise in marketing rather than a political statement. As is clear, then, Oscar diversity does not seem to come from the main powers that established the industry in the early 20th century and have controlled it ever since.
Further down the line, we have The Banshees of Inisherin (released by Searchlight Pictures) and Tár (released by Focus Features) as another cluster of nominees in multiple categories. These were both “unusual” films but very much relying on star power (Colin Farrell and Cate Blanchett, respectively), while their directors (Martin McDonagh and Todd Field, respectively) are no strangers to critical acclaim and awards (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and In the Bedroom, respectively). It is not surprising, therefore, to see that these two films were supported by specialty film companies that are subsidiaries of the major studios and tend to finance and/or release films with strongly marketable elements but not necessarily appealing to a wide demographic. Indeed, Searchlight Pictures is a division of Disney (and before that of 20th Century Fox), while Focus Features has been the indie arm of Universal, and both companies had been prominent in the release of films that dominated the Oscars in the 2000 and 2010s. With their focus on Irish rural life and a woman music conductor, the films of these companies contribute to some extent to the Hollywood diversity project, although neither seems to be a driving agent, with their emphasis on stardom and authorship making them easy fits in an industry accustomed to this type of film marketing.
Diversity does not seem to have come from the streamers either. Despite its inroads in recent year with Roma, Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom and The Power of the Dog, Netflix’s key success story this year has been All Quiet in the Western Front, while Guillermo Del Toro’s animated Pinocchio can also claim a contribution, even though the animated feature is in the English language and features the voices of such mainstream stars as Ewan McGregor and, again, Cate Blanchett.
So, where did all the Asian/Asian American power of Everything Everywhere All at Once come from, if not from Hollywood studios, their specialised subsidiaries and the streaming giants? It came from one of the most successful “independent” companies, A24. Barely 10 years of age, A24 has swiftly emerged as one of the most successful media companies of recent years, with a number of Oscar winning films under its belt, including diversity poster title Moonlight (2016) but also Lady Bird (2017 – Best Original Screenplay) and Minari (2020 – Actress in a Supporting Role). Indeed, hours after the success of Everything Everywhere All at Once, newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times were rushing to admit that this success is “the latest sign that the company has cemented itself as the indie powerhouse to beat.” This is also because A24 was behind The Whale, a less diverse, but certainly non-mainstream, film that won an Oscar for Actor in a Leading role (Brendan Fraser).
But is A24 a small independent company that promotes diversity and pushes the envelope when it comes to representation and identity or is it a diversified entertainment conglomerate that is savvy in its marketing strategy and has therefore managed to carve a very distinct place in the industry? Established in 2012 by three executives with significant experience in the media and finance, A24 Films, as it was originally called, rode the wave of a new group of media companies that were entering the film business to take the place of studio specialty film divisions such as Paramount Vantage, Warner Independent, Picturehouse, Miramax and New Line Cinema that were shuttered by their corporate parents in the 2008-2010 period.
Still focusing on specialised film (rather than big budget properties), companies like A24 Films were distinguished from the old studio indie arms by the fact that they provided a much more diverse diet of films, including horror, a profitable genre that studio divisions specialising in indie film largely avoided. Furthermore, as they did not have a corporate relationship with a major studio, these companies were free to exploit opportunities in other media sectors, taking advantage of the media convergence that has been increasingly characterising the global media industries. As a result, A24 quickly dropped “Films” for its name and started developing its business in television while also signing a long-term deal with Apple TV to have a foothold on the streaming sector.
The critical (and much more rarely commercial) success of its films enabled A24 to develop significant visibility in the industry, especially as it became known as a filmmaker-friendly company, with well-established auteurs such as Harmony Korine, Sofia Coppola, Barry Jenkins, Greta Gerwig, the Safdie brothers, Yorgos Lanthimos, Atom Egoyan, Noah Baumbach, Lulu Wang, Kelly Reichardt and Sean Baker all releasing films with the company.
By the time it was ready to release Everything Everywhere All at Once, A24 was valued at $2.5 billion, had almost 500 employees and an estimated annual turnover of $123 million. These are hardly the numbers of a small independent company. But they do demonstrate how a new kid on the block can place itself within a global film industry dominated by major studios and streaming services that are increasingly focusing on media franchises and the global pursuit of subscribers (and therefore need to back properties that travel well internationally). In this media environment, A24 became known as a company that is willing to bet on diverse talent to tell stories that tend to be shunned by its much bigger industry competitors. However, unlike the indie studio divisions of the 1990s and 2000s, A24 achieved this by also hedging its bets, both by releasing a host of other films (thrillers, horror, sci-fi) with commercial potential and no effort to embrace diversity and by branching into television (again with a variety of programming) and now streaming.
So long as this strategy continues to work financially, we can expect to see more diversity from A24’s releases. But if the returns are not what a $2.5 billion company anticipates, diversity may need to be sought in films by smaller independents and non-US companies that hardly register in an incredibly congested marketplace. In this respect, let us enjoy the success of Everything Everywhere All at Once, but keep an eye on who has the financial resources and marketing savvy to make this kind of a film in the future as well as on where the increasingly “diverse” membership of the Academy will be looking for diverse films to showcase at the Oscars.
Media/Pool 