This article contains spoilers.
"I remember a time when the major studios didn't believe a woman or a minority could open a super hero movie—and the reason I remember that time is because it was March of last year."
So said Jimmy Kimmel in his opening monologue at today’s Oscars. And at a glance, it certainly does appear that the Oscars have not only gotten the “diversity” memo, but have finally read it.
Rachel Morrison is the first woman to be up for the cinematography award for Mudbound. A victory for Greta Gerwig will make her only the second woman to snag Best Director and Get Out, which satirises the hidden racism of ‘good white liberals’ is also up for multiple awards.
But let’s be honest, . And to understand why diversity is so elusive off-screen we need to take a closer look at how it is presented on screen. The remaining Oscar nominees not only feature the usual white men in the key creative roles, but even among those films that appear to tick the most boxes are a lesson in how easily we can be fooled into seeing diversity and progress where it doesn’t really exist.
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri duly has a “strong female character” in the lead. But, as the backlash to the film has already revealed, its portrayal of race is at best oblivious. White characters, for example, bark the N word at each other while the script winks about how “N-bashing” should be called “person of colour bashing.”
The Shape of Water isn’t much better. Yes, it features a mute woman in the lead romantic role and it has a bevy of similarly marginalised supporting characters, but these are similarly clichéd.
Less discussed is the film’s depiction of women. Apart from Mildred, the increasingly violent and obsessed mother seeking justice for her murdered daughter (played by Best Actress nominee Frances McDormand), the few female speaking parts are little more than stereotypical airheads or eye candy or both. Abbie Cornish is not given much of a chance to shine in her one-dimensional role as a cop’s long-suffering wife, while the other women’s embarrassing lack of intelligence seems to be the film’s primary form of providing comic relief.
The Shape of Water isn’t much better. Yes, it features a mute woman in the lead romantic role and it has a bevy of similarly marginalised supporting characters, but these are similarly clichéd. Octavia Spencer’s formidable talents are wasted as the selfless sassy sidekick, surely a racial stereotype best left in the past?
Like Mildred’s Black Female Friend in Three Billboards, she seems to exist only to help the main white lady character achieve her goals.
And then there is Call Me By Your Name. This is probably the hardest film to critically analyse because, thanks mostly to Best Actor nominee Timothee Chalamet’s earnest turn as the teenage Elio, it has become so beloved in such a short time. Yes, it is incredible to see a film with gay, or at least gay-curious, main characters not only cross into the mainstream but to achieve such critical and audience acclaim.
Nonetheless, it remains a film about gay male sexual awakening that does not feature gay sex or male frontal nudity. This in itself is not a problem. What is a problem, is that the straight sex scenes are depicted fairly graphically, and they do contain female frontal nudity. Director Luca Guadagnino , choosing to pan away to the window of all things, because, “To put our gaze upon their lovemaking would have been a sort of unkind intrusion.”
What is there to deduce from this other than women’s bodies are not to be similarly respected? Maybe if she had been a lead character this decision could be justified. But Esther Garrel, whose body is seemingly acceptable to intrude upon when she is lovemaking, is not given an above-the-line credit nor has she shared the accolades, the red carpet appearances and the endless television interviews with her male co-stars.
Source: Sony Pictures
This disrespect should not come as a surprise given the female characters in CMBYN are all treated fairly appallingly; ghosted, cheated on, two-timed, lied to, and generally kept in the dark about the reality of their men’s lives.
All of these films should have ticked the boxes, but when it comes to "representation," how marginalised groups are depicted is no less important than whether they are depicted at all.
Perhaps the greatest insult is saved for Elio’s mother who is, thankfully, not within earshot when her husband in a much-gushed over monologue, tells a shattered Elio that the youngster’s brief summer dalliance with an older man was actually more special and meaningful than anything his father had ever experienced. “I may have come close,” he concedes, hopefully referring to his wife.
Treating women this way is a choice made not by the characters, who don’t actually exist, but by the filmmaker who very much does. Which brings me back to the Shape of Water.
Yes, Sally Hawkins is the lead character and, unlike Garrel, she has gotten accolades and publicity plenty for her role, but that still isn’t enough reason for the director to show her completely naked and masturbating in the bathtub during the film’s opening credits.
We know nothing about this character yet, but we’ve already seen her in an extremely vulnerable position. Yes, it is designed to show that people with disabilities are no less sexual than their abled counterparts, but films do not exist in vacuums, and in an industry where female stars are routinely expected to strip off in order to even get a role while male stars insist on no frontal nudity (), then this remains a decision that says less about the character than it does the director and audience.
This creative decision becomes even more questionable given there is a scene in which Michael Shannon, as the quintessential bad American secret agent, is relieving himself in full view of both Hawkins and Spencer…but the audience does not even come close to catching a glimpse of his willy.
But then, even the amphibian is afforded more privacy than Hawkins. His penis is conveniently retractable, meaning despite being nude the entire time, it is not visible at any time given him the appearance of being “flat down there” like a very big and very scaly Barbie doll. The machinations of his penis are revealed to the audience like so:
There is a practical reason for this of course. Even the penis of a non-existent humanoid amphibian would not have passed the censors and resulted in a higher classification, affecting the film’s box office takings. Female nudity and sexual vulnerability is entirely normal and expected. But male nudity, whether real as in CMBYN or fabricated, is considered off limits.
Something is not right here. All of these films should have ticked the boxes, but when it comes to "representation," how marginalised groups are depicted is no less important than whether they are depicted at all. Nods to diversity are little more than just that when the same old tricks are still being employed to make sure white men still run the show.
