With Get Out, Lady Bird and Call Me by Your Name all up for awards at next week’s Oscars, you’d be forgiven for thinking that — approximately 90 years later — The Academy is recognising new, different voices, and highlighting the work of young filmmakers, female filmmakers, POC filmmakers, and stories about young, black, LGBTQ characters. But don’t celebrate just yet, because it looks like Get Out might not be scooping up the awards it deserves if the older Academy voters have anything to do with it.
According to an investigation by Vulture of 14 new Oscar voters, several older members have already brushed off Get Out, without even watching it first. “I had multiple conversations with longtime Academy members who were like ‘that was not an Oscar film’”, says Vulture’s Academy source. “And I’m like ‘that’s bullshit, watch it’. Honestly, a few of them had not even seen it and they were saying it, so dispelling that kind of thing has been super important.”
The source explained that a lot of voters on the Oscar committee were elderly Beverly Hills residents, some in their 70s, 80s and 90s, and that as a result, their view of the world was “a little locked-in”. “A movie like Get Out might be too much for them”, they explained. Instead these older voters, it seems, might be more likely to vote for The Post or The Darkest Hour as Best Picture, with younger voters likening the mood of the committee — which is populated by many older, white men — to an antiquated Southern debutante ball.
But it’s not all bad, with one anonymous Academy member going on to say: “It’s really exciting that movies like Moonlight and Get Out are getting this level of recognition and even getting made in the first place. I think these movements are far more likely to play out amongst younger voters than older ones.”
“In general, it just feels like there is a feeling that we have to award people who have maybe been overlooked before,” another new voter added. “It’s about not wanting to award people who they felt had been rewarded a lot in the past. Maybe we need to give someone else a chance. I definitely think, whether it was conscious or subconscious, that was happening.”
I guess we just have to tune in on Sunday and hope that baby boomers won’t ruin the Oscars for us along with, you know, the housing market, the economy…