Is the 2022 Oscar the most politically correct in history?

It seems unlikely that this time someone would protest in front of the Academy premises demanding inclusion and representativeness. If we review the candidates for Best Picture at the ninety-fourth edition of the Oscars, we can find many sectors present: films directed by women, African-American epics, Japanese filmmakers, even the first nomination of a male actor with hearing impairment, Troy Kotsur, part of the cast of “CODA: The Sounds of Silence”, also nominated for Best Picture, along with “Belfast”, “Don’t Look Up”, “Drive My Car”, “Dune”, “The Williams Method”, “Licorice Pizza ”, “The Alley of Lost Souls”, “West Side Story” and “The Power of the Dog”, a film by New Zealander Jane Campion, the first woman with two nominations for best direction in the history of the Oscars, and who will compete with his colleagues Kenneth Branagh, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Spielberg.

Following previous criticism, has the Academy done its homework to be more inclusive? For the critic Sebastián Pimentel, beyond his traditional conservatism, this time the representative entity of cinematographic activity has been aware that if it does not get in tune with the new times, it runs the risk of losing its influence and popularity. “Nobody ignores that the last Oscar broadcasts have not had the best ratings, and it is also true that the protests against the non-inclusion of women and African-Americans, on the part of Hollywood artists themselves, are becoming stronger,” points out.

On Tuesday morning, the announcement of the nominees for the 2022 Oscar Awards, whose award ceremony will be held on Sunday, March 27 at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, leaves notable surprises. For example, for the second consecutive year, Netflix manages to have two films nominated in the main category, namely “Don’t look up” and “The power of the dog”, the latter becoming the most nominated film on this platform in its entire history, thanks to your 12 nominations.

Also, “Drive My Car” is the fourteenth foreign language film that has achieved the nomination in the main category. It is also the first Japanese film to earn Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay nominations, while Ryusuke Hamaguchi becomes the third Japanese filmmaker to earn Best Directing nominations, following Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1966 and Akira Kurosawa in 1986.

For Pimentel, these results should not surprise us. “The creative vitality of Asian cinema has been going strong for decades and does not seem to wane. On the contrary, it enjoys great artistic health, with a boldness perhaps greater than that of the US and Europe. What the academy is doing is the smartest thing: include the new cinemas and their new protagonists“, it states.

Likewise, as the critic warns, in a world that is increasingly intercultural and globalized in its modes of consumption, cases such as the Korean series “The Squid Game”, the most watched on Netflix, demonstrates that the cultural barriers between the West and the East are in the process of dissolving. “It is seen that streaming is not an enemy of Hollywood or cinema, on the contrary, it is its great ally. The pandemic has transformed Hollywood, I even see it as anachronistic that series are not included in the Academy Awards”, he points out.

After an edition that went more unnoticed due to the conditions of the coronavirus, and wanting to distance itself from the scandals carried out by the downtrodden Golden Globes, the Oscar ceremony returns with the intention of giving us the illusion of returning to the old normality and, incidentally , recover the ratings.