Academy Awards 2021 tipped by bookies to be most inclusive Oscars in history amid big profits in diversity

If the Academy Awards are the manifestation of Hollywood’s best (and worst) character traits, it’s tempting to look at the frontrunners for this year’s event and think Tinseltown has finally grown a conscience. The nominees for Best Picture aren’t due to be announced until March 15, but it is already shaping up as a watershed moment for a category widely seen as a mirror for both the industry and the organisation who hands out Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. While the reflection in said mirror hasn’t always been pretty — and, no, that isn’t a reference to 1998 Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love — one need only look at the bookmakers to see how the 93rd Academy Awards could be a sight to behold for those who’ve long craved a more inclusive Hollywood. The overwhelming favourite to take home the gong at the ceremony on April 26 is director Chloe Zhao’s brilliant Nomadland, starring two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand. It tells the story of a woman who falls through the cracks of society and discovers a community of nomads living off the grid. A year after the Academy Awards was lambasted for failing to recognise any female filmmakers in the Best Director category, it seems almost certain Zhao will follow in the footsteps of Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and become the second woman to ever win this category. As a Chinese-American, a victory by Zhao would be historic on a number of levels. According to Sportsbet, second in line to the Best Picture throne is Aaron Sorkin’s Netflix drama, The Trial of the Chicago 7, which depicts a high-profile social justice case that took place in the Windy City during the Vietnam War, but is as much a commentary on modern-day America. When it comes to Oscar frontrunners that use the past as an allegory for the societal issues we face today, the commentary doesn’t get any more searing than Judas and the Black Messiah, which Sportsbet has as its fifth-most likely to win Best Picture. Directed by Shaka King, and starring Oscar-nominee Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), the film serves as a biography of sorts of the betrayal of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in the 1960s by an FBI informant he believed to be a friend. Even though the events depicted in the film take place decades before the first Black Lives Matter placard was painted, King’s movie nevertheless offers a stinging rebuke of police violence against black people in America, and a stark reminder that systemic racism is hardly a new phenomenon. The film’s resonance with current events is so strong, one particular scene in which police storm into the bedroom of a sleeping Hampton could almost be a dramatic re-enactment of the tragic death of Breonna Taylor last year after a botched police raid. Discrimination against people of colour in America is also an undercurrent in Da 5 Bloods, another highly fancied Best Picture contender, directed by Spike Lee. Lee, of course, has made a career out of turning an uncompromising spotlight on the treatment of black people in America, and this latest joint comes hot on the heels of the director’s similarly blistering BlacKkKlansman, which earned him an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2019. Amazon’s One Night in Miami, ranked seventh in favouritism according to Sportsbet, is another film this year that juxtaposes the treatment of black people in America in the past with where we are today. Regina King’s directorial debut fictionalises a real-life encounter that occurred on the night Cassius Clay — who shortly thereafter would change his name to Muhammad Ali — won the world heavyweight boxing championship from Sonny Liston in 1964. As legend has it, Clay spent the night after the fight at a hotel with black NFL pioneer Jim Brown, legendary soul singer Sam Cooke and iconic civil rights activist Malcolm X. No one really knows what was said that night (Cooke and Malcolm X died less than a year after the meeting), so King uses the set-up to examine the experience of black men in America, and, as with the other Best Picture contenders, juxtapose it, rather unflatteringly, with today. The key point to note when it comes to One Night in Miami, Da 5 Bloods, Judas and the Black Messiah and fellow Sportsbet favourite Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which could earn Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman a posthumous Best Actor gong, is these films are told from the perspective of black people. For Hollywood, this is a relatively new concept, and you only have to look back to 2019 to see for yourself. The top film that year was director Peter Farrelly’s Green Book, now considered one of the worst Best Picture winners in history. Ostensibly, the movie, which starred Viggo Mortensen as real-life Italian American bouncer Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga, was about racism in America’s Deep South in the 1960s. In this case, racism directed specifically at gifted black pianist Dr Don Shirley, played in the movie by Mahershala Ali, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. And therein lies the rub — that Ali was “supporting” Mortensen in a movie about racism against black people is a pretty clear indication the film is not told from the perspective of those most affected by the central issue. To put it another way, it would be like making a biographical film about the 2006 West Coast Eagles premiership from the perspective of then-Fremantle Docker Byron Schammer. You probably wouldn’t take it very seriously, right? In addition to the aforementioned Best Picture frontrunners that speak to and from the black experience in America, the top contenders this year also reflect Hollywood’s newfound commitment to gender and racial diversity, on both sides of the camera. Like Nomadland, Promising Young Woman is made by a woman — first-time director Emerald Fennell — and it also offers a stirring tale of female empowerment, albeit wrapped in a very different package. Carey Mulligan stars as a woman seeking to avenge the rape of her best friend by feigning drunkenness in nightclubs to teach would-be date rapists a lesson they won’t soon forget. It’s visceral, edgy and quite brilliant, effectively skewering toxic masculinity. It should be compulsory viewing for every bloke in Federal Parliament. Minari, meanwhile, which sits fourth on Sportsbet’s list of likely winners, is far more subtle but no less significant as a piece of trailblazing cinema. Korean-American director Lee Isaac Chung tells a semi-autobiographical story of a Korean immigrant family who move to rural Arkansas to start a small farm in the 1980s. Unlike the films mentioned earlier, Minari is not so much about discrimination, although the so-called third wave of Korean immigration surely faced some in America at the time, but is rather an insular portrait of one family’s struggles. That it could be seen as a quintessentially American OR Korean movie is perhaps its biggest strength, as well as clear evidence Hollywood is less afraid of minority storytelling than ever before. Even Mank, which Sportsbet lists as second-favourite to take home Best Picture honours, is not the stereotypical ode to Hollywood that the Academy has previously proved unable to resist. Far from being a love letter to the industry, David Fincher’s film about the screenwriter of Citizen Kane is a rather damning indictment of it. Even a glance beyond the short-priced favourites to the Best Picture long shots is instructional. The Tom Hanks vehicle, News of the World, uses 1870s frontier America to highlight the evils of white supremacists, Soul gives Pixar its first black lead character and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm literally lampoons Donald Trump. At this point, it would be more of a shock if the Best Picture category WASN’T stacked with a record number of gender and racially diverse films. As previously stated, it’s tempting to look at all this diversity as a sign Hollywood has finally grown a social conscience. If this is, indeed, the case, it certainly didn’t emerge spontaneously. For the past decade, the Hollywood establishment has been under siege, beset by a variety of controversies and social movements that have been conveniently reduced to hashtags — #OscarsSoWhite, #TimesUp and #MeToo, to name a few. If Oscar winners are the manifestation of Hollywood’s character, the ceremony itself is often the lightning rod for its flaws. From Chris Rock calling out the lack of racial diversity as Academy Awards host in 2016 to McDormand calling for an “inclusion rider” while accepting her Oscar in 2018, the industry’s historical shortcomings in terms of gender, racial and even sexual inclusivity have long been recognised but are now no longer accepted. But this seismic paradigm shift on its own is not enough to explain the diversity we’ll see at this year’s Academy Awards. The fact is, big studios, with shareholders to answer to, wouldn’t have grown a conscience if it wasn’t also fiscally prudent to do so. Yes, diversity is big business, and Hollywood has finally caught on. Black Panther made $1.7 billion at the worldwide box office in 2018, while Get Out was 2017’s most profitable film — both predominantly black films, made by black filmmakers. As far as women are concerned, 2017’s Wonder Woman was the third-highest grossing film of the year and the biggest live-action film directed by a woman. It simply cannot be understated that Hollywood becoming more socially aware has arrived at precisely the time when it is profitable to do so. After all, you don’t need a bookie to tell you self-interest is always an odds-on favourite.

Academy Awards 2021 tipped by bookies to be most inclusive Oscars in history amid big profits in diversity

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