Awards season is upon us, where people so good-looking they resemble alien life forms clutch gleaming golden statues like they contain eternal life. Which, I suppose, in some ways they do. Each year, the nominations for the spate of shows around this year always ferment some form of controversy, real or imagined. No female directors nominated at the 2020 Oscars for the umpteenth year is real, Ricky Gervais telling some mildly amusing jokes at the Golden Globes isn’t. Award shows supposedly represent the zenith of artistic creation, where cultural importance is rewarded with ludicrously opulent gift bags. In reality, they’re political, random and turn the arts into sport, where tribalism looms large and irrational anger is always round the smallest corner.
This year’s first genuine controversy is Michaela Coel, missing out on any nominations at the Golden Globes for I May Destroy You, arguably the most critically acclaimed TV show of the last year. It has reignited the ever-present criticism of awards shows since the #OscarsSoWhite campaign of 2015, when no BAME person was nominated for an award – and the idea that minority talent is excluded. I May Destroy You certainly has the potential to be a genre defining show; it’s an honest, realistic, beautifully constructed tale of trauma, sexual assault, love and determination. Michaela Coel’s performance is extraordinary and, coupled with the fact she wrote every episode of the 12-part series, means she has gained international acclaim. I was slightly less convinced by I May Destroy You than everyone else, but it’s a brilliant show no doubt and Michaela Coel obviously deserves an award nomination, and I would be astounded if she didn’t receive multiple BAFTA nods.
The Golden Globes were relatively diverse this year; multiple BAME nominations in nearly every acting category and three women nominated for best director suggests progress is being made, even if it is inch by inch. The controversy from Michaela Coel’s omission stems from two main factors; firstly, diverse representation in all sectors of society – from politics to journalism, the arts to business – has become the central political focus of the progressive left. Secondly, the intensity of the emotional attachment that viewers have awarded the show is immense. According to findings from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, one in five women have experienced some form of sexual assault from the age of sixteen. That is deplorable and depressing beyond measure. Coel’s staggering depiction of sexual assault and the complexity of trauma it creates is unprecedented in mainstream television. Coel’s awards snub not only makes people feel like a worthy performance and script has been rejected because of structural inequality, but at some level is a dismissal of the pain many of the viewers will have suffered.
Another issue is that awards are something that are ultimately silly and trivial but bestowed enormous cultural capital. Winning an Oscar or a BAFTA or the Mercury Prize does not confer artistic validation to your work, as awards seek to impose a pure objectivity onto something that can’t sustain it. Always remember that Citizen Kane, the Mt. Rushmore of the film cannon didn’t win an Oscar but Green Book, a slice of retrogressive, sentimental waffle did. Rhea Seehorn, who plays Kim Wekler on Better Call Saul, has not been nominated for a single major acting award despite being the consistently best actor on television over the last five years. These people are idiots, often wallowing in the mainstream centre, ignoring the indies and the sheer enormity of world cinema and television.
When the #OscarsSoWhite campaign began in 2015, the Oscar voting membership was 92% white and 75% male, by 2020 it had changed to 84% white and 68% male. This is neither good nor quick enough, but each tiny step of progress is still progress. A big issue is that, for example, the Oscar membership is not required to watch a film before voting. As I said before, these people are idiots. We need to structurally change the membership of the award bodies; just make it 50/50 male and female and work out a distribution of votes to minority groups as fairly as you can. It can never be perfect, nothing in life ever is, but it’s really not that hard. The change in the voting make-up should change the types of films that get nominated, the more varied the people who vote, a wider range of films and TV should follow. It could be that Michela Cole may still not have been nominated, these things, while structurally afflicted, have a randomness that can’t really be quantified.
Michaela Coel should have been nominated but it also doesn’t matter. This will not affect her career and she will go on making television or whatever else she wants to for years to come. That is her artistic validation, not some bronze statue coated in gaudy gold. Awards are laughable and it is very rare the best things of the year actually win – (Moonlight and Parasite being obvious recent exceptions). For my money, the best film of 2019 was The Swallows of Kabul, a beautiful, heartbreaking animated tale of confused love in Taliban occupied Afghanistan. Barely anyone saw it, it wasn’t nominated for any major awards and that year’s Oscar Best Animation award was won by… Toy Story 4.
I’ll leave you with this from genius comedian Stewart Lee, who on winning a BAFTA was asked how he felt about winning one after 20 years in the business, his reply was perfect; “You have to treat it like the weather and no one in their right mind would think that weather was for them or against them.”
Image Credit: Whitney Ashton Twitter (@whit_ashton)
