Almost any news story on the Academy Awards in the last year has been focused on one thing: #OscarsSoWhite. After last year’s much-derided nominees list (where all 20 nominated actors were white for the second year in a row), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pledged radical action. Members who had been dormant in the film industry were demoted to non-voting emeritus status, while Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs vowed to transform the makeup of incoming voters. That’s finally happening, and therecently announced new class is encouragingly diverse—even if the numbers only underscore the enormity of what Isaacs has to overcome.
The list of industry luminaries invited to join AMPAS is 683 names long (more than double the size of 2015’s class) out of 7,789 total members. Forty-six percent of new members are women, which will bump the overall female demographic from 25 to 27 percent. Forty-one percent are people of color, increasing that demographic from 8 to 11 percent. Coupled with the shedding of inactive, mostly older voters, the 2016 class amounts to the closest thing to a sea change for AMPAS—and marks the most significant reorganization of the Academy’s membership in its 90-year existence. As the frequent Oscars critic Mark Harris pointed out, these members will account for nearly 10 percent of next year’s voters. If such efforts continues, the Oscars could begin to feel substantially different and signal to the movie industry at large that it’s time to take similar, sweeping action.
The reforms have come after the last two years of Oscar nominations shut out performers of color at every level and mostly ignored well-received hits like Selma and Straight Outta Compton that seemed like traditional Academy material. Starting in 2015, journalists covering the Oscars began to focus more on the extreme whiteness of the Academy’s membership (94 percent in last year’s voting) and less on the films themselves. The voters had become the story, and Isaacs (who is African American) knew that was untenable.
“This class continues our long-term commitment to welcoming extraordinary talent reflective of those working in film today,” she said in a statement. “We encourage the larger creative community to open its doors wider, and create opportunities for anyone interested in working in this incredible and storied industry.” This year’s membership drive also included a huge push for international voters, naming 283 new members from 59 different countries.
[For more of this story, written by David Sims, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/ent...ite-and-male/489509/]
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