The State of the Race: Why the Oscar Demographic Matters and Why it Doesn’t

If you’ve been watching the Oscar race for as many years as I have, and indeed dove into their quirks, history and particulars, you’ll notice a few things. The Oscar voters represent one thing. Then there are the people who cover the awards. We can all be divided into demographic groups that tend to influence how we cover, analyze, and indeed insert our preferences into the race. Probably if the Academy were more diverse — in terms of gender, sexual orientation, racial background — there would not be a stark difference every year in terms of how the race is covered and how it ends up.  Those of us who do not fall in the “straight, white, older male” demographic tend to want to upset the apple cart, perhaps to try to change the way they think, to make the race more fluid, less static. But the fact remains. The Academy, despite recent changes, is still ruled by older, straight, white males, and those voters remain stubbornly set in their ways.

They are what Harvey Weinstein has called the “steak eaters.” To me, the Oscar pundit who seems to really get their mindset best is Anne Thompson at Indiewire. She seems to know them pretty well and does not condescend to who they are. She doesn’t get particularly angry with them or try to sway their votes. She accepts them as they are and doesn’t try to impose her way of thinking upon them. Think of her as the Jane Goodall of the Oscar world. Then there is Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere, who is probably as close to a typical Oscar voter as anyone who covers the race. He’s the right age, the right gender, etc. This group of voters bristle as snooty critics and don’t like anyone telling them what to think or do. They also resist any sort of pressure to alter the landscape of power in Hollywood. They would say they don’t like to vote “just because” someone is black or female or gay or Asian, etc. (Unspoken subtext for some: Aside from their “diversity” what do those people have to offer?) The steak eaters want it to be about what they like, period, the end. As this year’s presidential election has taught us quite plainly: this is a group that has always been charge and they want to keep it that way. They decide. The rest of us are meant to follow along like baby chicks pecking where they peck first.

Yeah, I know. I know. Trust me, I know. But it is what it is. If you’re not someone who can match them taste-wise, and you aren’t someone who can sit back and surrender to their choices, you are in for a world of hurt. Whatever you like will be left on the Oscar scrapheap — but will probably be remembered and valued far more in the long run.  This is my own personal hell every year. People tell me not to care.  “The trick is not minding.” So why do we care? We care because, I suppose, down deep we want our taste and preferences to be validated. And not just validated by the critics or the ticket buying public. We want the awards for “the best” to go to what we think is best. But that’s kind of hard to do if we’re a mismatch with the Academy’s biggest demo. So we’re left trying to second-guess what “they” will do, what “they” will think.

Unfortunately for the Oscar race, despite recent efforts to open the Academy to fresh voices, it is only becoming more and more insular, less and less embracive of evolving technologies or generations. Teenagers and 20-somethings — unless they’re hardwired to be interested in the Oscar race — rarely see anything there anymore except “The Oscar Movie.” As my daughter told me last year, “It’s always the same movie.” And it’s true — it always it. It’s usually a movie that somehow massages the angst of the white male who frets about the state of the world and either frets because he can’t fix it or tries to fix it, then celebrates his greatness.  Who can argue? It is what it is. We all respond to different films for different reasons because we all come at them from a different place. Some argue that industry voters are coming at it from the perspective of a professional. They purportedly choose what they believe is best written, directed, acted, designed, composed, edited, etc. But really, when you’re talking about a large consensus of voters — 150K for SAG, 14,500 for the DGA, 6,000 or so for the PGA and Academy — you’re really just into the rarefied territory of a general consensus of people who do not seem to inhabit the same world the general public does.

From the perspective of these male voters, women simply do not fit the bill as leaders or fixers. They fit the narrative better as wives or mothers or girlfriends. Or bitches. Or whores. Women are seen as part of what needs to be fixed. Thus, as you will see moving forward, films where women really are at the center of things — not flopping around in a spacesuit trying to get home by finding the safest way to fall — but in control as the center of the film, actively affecting the course of events, become less and less common. Lost women, confused women, women in need of saving or fixing are a much more popular figure in most movies because the great fretting man needs a purpose. What purpose does he have if the woman is in charge?

Of course, this attitude doesn’t describe all Oscar voters, or all industry voters. But it tends, more often than not, to be how their choices are meted out when thousands of them get together to vote. Compare, for instance, Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth vs. Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola in Shakespeare in Love. What was the main difference between these roles? Power. Even with Million Dollar Baby and Silence of the Lambs, two recent winners that went along with Best Actress, you’re looking at a vulnerable woman somehow involved with a more sophisticated “fixer” or “fretter.” Would Silence of the Lambs have been as exciting without the central performance of Hannibal? Probably not. Ditto Million Dollar Baby.

Even a film as extraordinary in so many ways as 12 Years a Slave could not escape the obligatory white male fretter/fixer somewhere in the mix. Almost all Best Picture winners do. Let’s do this:

Spotlight – fixer
Birdman – fretter
12 Years a Slave – fretter/fixer
Argo – fixer
The Artist – fretter
The King’s Speech – fixer
The Hurt Locker – fretter
No Country for Old Men – fretter
The Departed – fretter
Million Dollar Baby – fretter/fixer
Chicago – EXCEPTION
Gladiator – fixer
American Beauty – fretter
Shakespeare in Love – fretter
The English Patient – fretter
Forrest Gump – fretter
Unforgiven – fixer
The Silence of the Lambs – fixer
Driving Miss Daisy – EXCEPTION
Rain Man – fretter/fixer
The Last Emperor – fixer
Platoon – fretter

And on and on it goes – fixer, fretter, fixer, fretter, with the occasional Terms of Endearment in between, every 10 years or so. What changed, what shifted, what happened, I have not yet figured out, but movies like Terms of Endearment barely get made anymore, let alone win Best Picure. It just doesn’t happen. You know it, I know it. It’s what Lynda Obst calls “the new normal” in her book, Sleepless in Hollywood. Movies like this have mostly evacuated to television or VOD. The few that do get a theatrical release aren’t exactly embraced by critics. Even fewer make it into the Oscar race.

So here is how I see this years’s movies fitting in with the needs of the Academy majority demographic:

Movies that Fit
La La Land – fretter/fixer
Manchester by the Sea – fretter
Loving – fretter
Silence – fretter
Sully – fixer
Lion – fixer
Hell or High Water – fixer
20th Century Women – fretter
Hidden Figures – EXCEPTION perhaps
Rules Don’t Apply – fretter
Hacksaw Ridge – fixer/fretter

Movies that don’t seem to fit:
Moonlight – EXCEPTION
Arrival – EXCEPTION
Fences – EXCEPTION
Jackie – EXCEPTION
Miss Sloane – EXCEPTION

If you hope the white male voters can see beyond the racial aspect, and get past all the problems they present, you could put Fences up in the fretter category, probably. Maybe even Moonlight, as well. But the consistent thread running throughout your typical Best Picture winner is that there is generally a white male character who is either a fixer or a fretter or both. It’s not rocket science to figure out why. It’s their demo. It’s what resonates best with them. It’s who they are. It is what it is.

When  I read Oscar analysis on Twitter or anywhere else, I always try to look at it from that perspective, and it is always remarkable how much each of us applies our own experiences and our own preferences to the Oscar race. Because we can’t help it. We can’t help but see things as filtered through our own lives. This too, is what it is.

The life experience of a straight white older male is inherently different from, say, that of a white woman or a black woman or a black man or a gay man or a gay woman. The sensibilities vary, the preferences shift. I suppose, in the end, that is part of why predicting the Oscars is so hard. We have to blind ourselves to our own perspective and put on the glasses with the Academy filter. Some are good at this, some aren’t.

This isn’t a forever thing. Times are changing. Movies are changing. The industry is changing. It has to. There will be a new generation coming up as the boomers age out. What they watch, what they love — that will be the new normal.