We Need To Talk About The Golden Globes
What’s Up With The Lack Of Women Nominees?
2023 is the year of the 80th Golden Globe Awards and after two years of female best director winners, this year’s list of nominees is disappointingly, and yet unsurprisingly, white and male. On top of that, with exception of the Daniels, the nominated directors are those that have been around for years. Their names echoed through the halls of film schools and top 10 lists the world over.
So, what happened?
There were definitely films released in the past year directed by women. In fact, there is an entire list available on womenandhollywood.com to prove it [1]. Some of the major contenders for Award nominations include The Woman King (Gina Prince-Bythewood), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells), and Women Talking (Sarah Polley)[2]. Yet none appeared in the Golden Globes nominations list for Best Director. It begs the question of what is different about 2023 compared with the past two years where we DID see women nominated in this category?
The Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film’s report The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women on Top Grossing U.S. Films in 2022 [3] found “women comprised 24% of directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 grossing films.” A decline of 1 percentage point from 25% in 2021. In the Director role specifically, women comprised 18% a decline of 1 percentage point from last year as well. However, these numbers are not a big enough decline to represent a complete lack of women in director nominees for this year’s Golden Globes.
It is clear from this report alone that statistics don’t really play a role in determining what will be nominated each year. Afterall women have only made up about a quarter of the crew in the top 250 grossing films for the last few years and yet pulled off two wins two years in a row at both the Golden Globes and the Oscars in the Best Director category (Power of the Dog, Jane Campion, 2022 & Nomadland, Chloe Zhao, 2021). You would think logically that we could look at the numbers and draw a conclusion, but art is subjective, and filmmaking is art. So what are the criteria for a nomination and how big of a part does misogyny or, probably more likely, unconscious bias play?
To be nominated for a Golden Globe the film needs to have been released in the past calendar year, screened for a Hollywood Foreign Press Association member, submitted via an entry form where the filmmakers also put up which categories they wish the film to be nominated in, and then voted on by the Active and Emeritus members and international voters who all have to agree that they in no way have any conflict of interest (personal investments, family members in films, bribes, or influence) when it comes to their votes [5]. The voting is also overseen by accounting firm Ernst & Young. Overall, it’s very business-like in its process and seems at least in the backend to put a lot of onus on the filmmakers to make sure they do their paperwork to end up in the mix to begin with. However, the voting itself is still another topic for debate.
Regardless of not taking a bribe, or partaking in nepotism, things like unconscious bias can creep in. We’ve seen this before with blind film festival picks; for example Tropfest here in Australia back in 2017, where the gender split ends up being closer to 50/50 when judges don’t know the gender of the crew involved. Also, as humans, we are usually drawn to things we find familiar. The mere-exposure effect or familiarity principle was developed by Polish social psychologist scholar Robert Zajonc and is summarised by Wikipedia as “a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.” [4] In my opinion, having director nominations like Spielberg and Baz Luhrmann is a sure sign that something like the familiarity principle influenced the votes of the members.
The Oscars however hit my personal gripe with award shows on the head in their regulations for deciding on nominees and winners. “The Academy requires that voting members of the Academy make their choices based solely on the artistic and technical merits of the eligible films and achievements.”[6]
My least favourite word. Merit.
As mentioned already Films and other art forms are not like maths. You can get a maths question wrong and an exam’s criteria for what makes a person good or bad at maths is very black and white. You cannot apply the same level of logic to film criteria. It is ALL subjective. And whilst sometimes we can reach a consensus that a film was “good” there will still be those who disagree. And that’s okay. That’s the point of art and storytelling to make people think, question, and start conversations. But over the years the film industry has been shaped so thoroughly by what a particular gender, and let’s be honest race, thinks is good. Subsequently, award shows are framed by that opinion too. This is why I think award shows have struggled over the past few years because the world culturally has begun to shift away from that point of view. What we deem interesting and culturally relevant is being shaped by voices that come from many different backgrounds. What “merit” is, is different than what it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. And so, this dissonance is now being reflected in our award shows.
The industry as a whole was shaken up by the MeToo movement. In the best way possible it shined a light on a culture that was incredibly problematic and causing a significant negative impact on women in the industry. I would like to think we are getting better at combating this, and certain things have been put in place throughout the industry to make it a safer space for women in general, but we still have a ways to go. The uptick in female nominees since MeToo is more than mere coincidence and at the ceremonies, celebrities made a point of including something surrounding the topic of sexism in their speeches. Yet I wrote a blog post last year about how all of this is very performative. The big moments that the world really looks at Hollywood they like to put on a show and pretend things are better than they are, which hides the fact that things are still not great.
After looking at all of this it begs the question to me at least how much weight should we be placing on award shows anyway? They clearly aren’t an unbiased reflection of the best in filmmaking and storytelling. They play into cultural climates of the time trying not to step on toes and sometimes end up doing that over and over again regardless. Even the ceremonies themselves have become a bit of a joke. The memes last far longer than people remember who won what that year. See the infamous slap, the Ellen selfie, Ricky Gervais hosting ANY of the Golden Globes etc. In a speculative article about the potential 2023 Best Picture Oscar nominees David Crow states that Everything Everywhere All At Once is a “film [that] suggests a future for artfully rewarding cinema that appeals to younger millennial and Gen-Z moviegoers—an audience the Academy is eager to court to ensure future relevancy.[2]” I would agree that award shows continuously reward films that the current generation of audiences don’t really care about, generally speaking.
Winning films tend to be one or a combination of long, boring, depressing, making some kind of statement, and quite often completely disconnected from what audiences or general movie watchers would consider the better film out of the list. This disconnection to me at least highlights the irrelevance of award shows in the modern age. Who are the Golden Globes really for? If it’s just for the people in Hollywood, why broadcast it to the public? And more poignantly since they are broadcasting them why do they stray away from representing the diversity of the world in their nominations?
I don’t believe the style of films that receive nominations is going to change any time soon, but the landscape for filmmaking has. Take these award shows with a grain of salt and as someone who watches films, I would encourage you to broaden the types of stories you watch and if you really enjoy something talk about it with people, share it on the internet, make noise and put your wallet where your mouth is because that is a far more powerful of shaping the future of this industry than a Best Directing nomination ever could be.
REFERENCES:
[1] https://womenandhollywood.com/resources/films-by-and-about-women/women-directed-films-currently-playing/women-directed-films-in-2022/ - Women and Hollywood, 2022
[2] https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/oscars-2023-frontrunners-and-contenders/ - David Crow January 6th, 2023, Den Of Geek
[3] https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/the-celluloid-ceiling-employment-of-behind-the-scenes-women-on-top-grossing-u-s-films-in-2022/ - The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women on Top Grossing U.S. Films in 2022
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect#cite_note-zajonc_2001-1
[5] HOLLYWOOD FOREIGN PRESS ASSOCIATION® GOLDEN GLOBE® AWARD CONSIDERATION RULES, 2022
[6] REGULATIONS CONCERNING THE PROMOTION OF FILMS ELIGIBLE FOR THE 95TH ACADEMY AWARDS® - Issued by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, June 2022