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Update: Birds of Prey is now available for purchase on iTunes.

In one soon-to-be classic scene from Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) enters a Gotham police department in full glamourpuss regalia: a broad black hat perched over a fuchsia silk scarf, a sleek trench coat, and Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. 

“Can I help you?” an officer asks.

“Why yes,” she purrs in her best received pronunciation. “I’m here to report a terrible crime.”

“And what terrible crime is that?” the officer replies, clearly uninterested in helping her . Before he knows it, the woman before him has shed her glossy outerwear, revealing high-waisted denim shorts, red suspenders, and a shotgun loaded with glitter pellets and bean bags. “This one,” she crows, taking aim. 

Director Cathy Yan pitched DC’s Harley Quinn spinoff movie using clips from The Bachelor and Keeping Up With The Kardashians alongside Max Max: Fury Road. Her ethos? Understand the system you’re challenging (The Bachelor and KUWTK being the system), and then set it on fire (a la Mad Max). Like Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, Robbie’s Harley Quinn is an unpredictable threat to the men who run her society. But instead of a cropped haircut and leather armor, she wields the very girly trappings used to control her as lethal weapons. It’s 2020, and women no longer have to sacrifice pink and sequins to kick ass. 

Subtitled “The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn,” (although the title has been changed in certain theaters) the movie follows its protagonist as she twists, twirls, and cons her way out from under ex-boyfriend and former partner in crime Joker’s thumb, establishing her own legend and following in the process. “All of the women are underestimated in this movie,” Yan said during an interview at Refinery29’s New York offices. “Harley’s underestimated. [Men] think that she’s just a girlfriend, or she’s crazy and fun and sexy, but not capable.”

Yan knows what that’s like. “I’m a small Asian girl, and I certainly have been underestimated before,” she said. “Sometimes that can be used to your advantage.”

That could be the tagline for Birds of Prey, which assembles a crew of unlikely misfits with few options other than to work together to survive. Faced with the threat of Ewan McGregor’s Black Mask, Harley Quinn reluctantly teams up with child pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), the revenge-seeking Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), whose voice is so powerful it can literally shatter glass. In true Bachelor parlance, none of these women are here to make friends — in fact, they’ve been trained to think they’re natural enemies. But necessity breeds innovation, and they soon realize that their strength lies in numbers. 

Yan only had a couple of shorts and one indie film under her belt when she was tapped to helm Warner Bros.’ Harley Quinn spinoff, written by Christina Hodson (Bumblebee) and produced by Robbie’s LuckyChap shingle. It’s the kind of career blastoff story one usually hears about male directors: Colin Treverrow famously made the jump from a debut indie feature with a $750,000 budget (Safety Not Guaranteed) to a $150 million studio blockbuster when Steven Spielberg hand-picked him to direct Jurassic World.  But it’s no happy coincidence — with LuckyChap, Robbie has leveraged her own success in order to lift up other women creatives who might otherwise be shut out of the industry. Birds of Prey marks the very first time a woman of Asian descent has helmed a studio-backed superhero film, one with a reported budget of nearly $100 million.

The China-born Yan grew up in northern Virginia, where her family encouraged her burgeoning artistic streak. Still, she never once thought that this was a passion she could pursue professionally. “I didn’t see anyone much like me doing it,” she said. “I come from an immigrant family that was very much about academia, even though I had very creative parents. It just wasn’t anything that seemed possible or even within my world.”

At 14, Yan and her parents moved to Hong Kong. She came back to the United States for college, attending Princeton University, where she received a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 2008. She worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal before enrolling at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to pursue a dual MBA/MFA degree. And even then, she thought she’d go on to be a producer. “It really took me actually meeting people who were going to film school [to even] give me an opportunity to think of [directing] as something I could do.”

Just days before Birds of Prey’s release, Yan sat down with Refinery29 to talk about the challenges of breaking into Hollywood, and why it’s time to take a glitter gun to the idea of the perfect woman. 

Refinery29: We’ve seen women villains before, and even anti-heroes, but they’re rarely fun, playful characters in the way that men get to be. How did you toe the line between making Harley someone we can root for without giving her a moral redemption arc?

Cathy Yan: “The likeability thing is a huge conversation. I lucked out having Margot [Robbie] — she’s just so likable, and she’s infinitely watchable and able to bring charisma and heart and charm to the character. Because the character can be really annoying, I think it was about showing the sides of her that I think people can immediately empathize with. Whether it’s being a little bit of a hot mess after that breakup, or her love for an egg sandwich, there’s these moments throughout the movie where Harley does redeem herself. But I don’t think any of [the Birds of Prey] would be described as likable, and I’ll take that as a badge of honor.”

Was it always your intention that these women wouldn’t really get along, but team up out of necessity?

“That was something that I really wanted to tease out of the script: This suspicion towards one another. That’s unfortunately the system that we were born and bred into. It’s [been] so nice to see that get dismantled in recent years, but also I think we have to be realistic and acknowledge that most of our lives, there was that one spot. There’s just so much institutionalized competition, and that was a story that I wanted to tell. But it doesn’t also have to be this kumbaya moment. It can be what it is, which is they are suspicious, they had to work together, and through them working together, through them fighting together, that’s when they start to like each other. But even then, they don’t always have to get along.”

The female gaze is so hard to describe — it’s like obscenity: You know it when you see it. What does it mean to you in the context of this film?

“It’s about respecting the characters as opposed to seeing [them] in any sort of objectified way, and also celebrating the woman behind the character. Every single woman on our set has spent a long time in this industry. Mary[-Elizabeth Winstead] and Jurnee [Smollett-Bell] were both child actors, and Margot started when she was young, too. Rosie [Perez] has been around for a while in the most epic way. They all spoke about [how] was really nice to be on set and not feel like their guard is up, and have to be the one woman being like, ‘Can we not have that camera be down there?’

“And I don’t think that it’s as black-and-white as male or female per se. Matty Libatique was our [director of photography], and he is thoughtful and sensitive. It’s not so defined by pure gender. I think it’s more just the attitude of respect and caring more about the performance and the characters as opposed to something else.”

There’s been some backlash from male fans who claim that Harley’s outfits are less sexy in this film than they were in Suicide Squad. What’s your response?

“I actually think Harley probably has more skin exposed than what she wears in Suicide Squad. For me, it’s the fit of the pants; it’s a high-waisted short, which is just more flattering on most women, and something Margot was more comfortable with. I remember the first time Margot put on that confetti jacket, she just didn’t want to take it off, and you know then and there that it’s right. It was never my intent to top down create these costumes, but more like, Let’s just have fun with it. What do you want to wear? What is going to make you feel cool and badass, and look good? What are you wearing right now that would be interesting for us to even pull from? Those are the kinds of conversations we were having.”

The casting of this film also marks a change in the culture —  the fact that you not only have several women, but also women of color, of varying ages. That’s still rare. 

“Someone like Ella Jay Basco [who plays Cassandra Cain] is so heartening to me because she is a great version of the future. She’s got such a good head on her shoulders, and she is so confident in herself. She doesn’t want to be anyone else and her family is so supportive of that. Her friends are so supportive of that. She just doesn’t seem to have the neuroses that I think I grew up with, and if she can help show that to other girls like her, or even younger than she is, I think that’s remarkable.”

I read that you fought to cast Rosie Perez because the character wasn’t originally written for a woman her age. Is that true?

“Yeah. I always adored Rosie, and I liked the idea that when you saw all the women together, they did make sense, but not in the way you would expect. Just having this diversity in every single way. I think it does mean a lot for women of a certain age to see someone like that — and she’s doing all of her own stunts!”

The action scenes in the movie feel very specific to the considerations women might have during those moments. What were those like to film?

“I spoke a lot about that with Jonathan Eusebio, our stunt coordinator. How can we make it somewhat realistic that they can beat these men? Like how are they better at the craft of kicking ass? Maybe they are just better fighters. That’s one way that they can beat them. Another way is to actually utilize their size or their flexibility. There are several nut shots in the movie — where can you hit the guy that’s going to cause the most harm? It’s a lot of just figuring out what levers we can pull to make it feel more realistic, as opposed to ‘She pushes him and he falls.’”

You directed one indie before taking on this big studio movie. That’s usually the kind of story we hear from male directors — how did it happen in your case?

“My first feature, Dead Pigs, went to Sundance [in 2018]. And then a month or two after that I met with Christina Hodson, the [Birds of Prey] screenwriter. We share very similar backgrounds, and it was really nice to see someone pretty close to my age doing it because at that point she had already written Bumblebee. And then I met Margot, and again, she’s such an impressive person, but someone that I felt at least some sort of kinship towards and I could relate to. Having those discussions was very encouraging because they were role models. And then I went in and pitched the movie, and it all happened really quickly.”

You said you feel connected to this story — are there elements that you pulled from your own life experience?

“In subtle ways. Ewan [McGregor] and I talked about what small little triggers that we women have experienced before, and about just peppering it in when it felt right. Towards the end of one scene he just goes, ‘Do as you’re told.’ It’s these little microaggressions — for a long time I think we didn’t even know what they were. It was just reality. I remember so distinctly that video that came out where a woman was just walking down Canal Street and [filmed] all the cat-calls. ’ I can finally walk down Canal Street now without someone either cat-calling me or saying konichiwa to me. It was not so long ago when that was completely appropriate.”

2020 is being hailed as a turning point for women in the industry — five major studio films being released, including this one, are directed by women. How do we make sure it’s not a one-off?

“It’s a sustainability question now. We know that women can get hired in these roles. 2020 has proven that, and hopefully all the movies do well enough that it proves there is a demand for that kind of movie. I think the next step is: Are female directors on lists for movies that are not about women? I think we all want to do it all. Margot is an incredibly good example — she is making her own future, and she’s empowering others and creating this community. I didn’t think I would use the MBA portion of my dual degree when I was going to film school, but it’s extremely important to have as much control over everything over your creative decisions as a director.”

What do you hope women who see Birds of Prey take away from it?

“I want them to celebrate the fact that the women that they see on screen are anything but perfect. They can still be badass and sexy, but they can also be really tortured and wrong, and unlikeable, and a little difficult. We can all let go of this need to be so perfect all the time.”

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According to a recent study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, film criticism is a field overwhelmingly dominated by (surprise, surprise) white men. Not anymore. In Refinery29’s new series, our woman movie critic will give fresh consideration to the movies we love, hate, or love to hate. It’s time for a rewrite.

I had to buy an actual DVD in order to revisit Crossroads, the Tamra Davis-directed and Shonda Rhimes-written 2002 coming-of-age road trip movie, featuring none other than pop star Britney Spears in her first — and only — starring role. You’d think that the most notable entry in Spears’ filmography — written by the creator of Grey’s Anatomy, and helmed by the director of Billy Madison and Half Baked, no less — would be available to stream on the internet, but you’d be wrong. You can’t rent it on iTunes, nor does it appear in Amazon Prime’s catalogue. Hulu doesn’t have it, nor does YouTube, Vudu, or Google Play. Netflix used to have it, but no longer. Which begs the question: What good is having 25 bajillion streaming subscriptions if I cannot watch Britney Spears, playing a virginal, high school valedictorian named Lucy, do Joan Jett-karaoke whenever I want?

But, Crossroads’ absence from the streaming universe goes hand in hand with its overall reputation as a fluffy piece of teeny bopper pop culture, rather than an essential entry in the canon of Cinema. The movie currently holds a 14% Rotten Tomatoes rating. When it was released in February 2002, male critics seemed confused that a film starring a sexy pop star did not feature more of that pop star being, well, sexy — or what they considered sexy, anyway.

“If you’re not the target demographic, which Spears helpfully defines in the film’s single — ‘I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman’ — this movie is one long chick-flick slog,” Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone, adding that “randy males, ranging from hormone-charged teens to a Viagra-fueled Bob Dole, will have to save the drool for Pepsi commercials, belly-baring videos and tracks in which the twenty-year-old pop princess whispers, ‘I’m a slave for you.’”

Nathan Rabin echoed that sentiment over at the A/V Club. “Spears is filmed and costumed in such a harsh, unflattering manner that it looks like Christina Aguilera bribed the crew to make her rival look as hideous as possible,” he wrote.

The inability for critics — men and women alike — to give consideration to the opinions of teenage girls as an audience is pervasive; it’s the same attitude that fueled a recent debate over Leonardo DiCaprio’s star power before and after Titanic. His performance in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet spoke to an entire generation of young women, but many men discount the importance of that since it didn’t speak to them. 

Roger Ebert nailed the conundrum, albeit in his negative review of Crossroads, which once again emphasized the movie’s lack of male-gaze sex-appeal. “I went to Crossroads expecting a glitzy bimbofest and got the bimbos but not the fest. Britney Spears’ feature debut is curiously low-key and even sad,” he wrote. 

There is sadness and pain running through the movie. Believe it or not, teenage girls don’t just respond to sunshine and rainbows. (See: Thirteen, Marie Antoinette, But I’m A Cheerleader, and, well, Romeo + Juliet, to name a few.)

Crossroads opens with young Lucy (played by Spears’ younger sister, Jamie Lynn) making a pact with her two best friends, Kit and Mimi : At midnight, following their high school graduation, they’ll dig up the friendship box in which they’ve placed tokens of their hopes and dreams. By the time graduation rolls around however, the girls — and their friendship — have changed pretty dramatically. Lucy is a virginal valedictorian who confines her love of singing to performing in her bedroom with a hairbrush for a mic; Kit (Zoe Saldana), the popular one, is already engaged at 18 to a sophomore at UCLA. Meanwhile, Mimi (Taryn Manning) is pregnant, and looking to get the hell out of their Georgia hometown. 

Despite having grown apart over the years, something draws them back to that spot in the woods where they’d buried their ambitions years earlier. It’s then that Mimi lays out her plan: She’s heading to California for an open studio audition, hitching a ride with local guitarist and bad boy, Ben (Anson Mount). Lucy, discouraged by her dad’s (Dan Akroyd) inability to explain why her mom left years earlier, decides to join them so she can travel to Arizona to meet her mother (Kim Cattrall). And finally Kit, whose fiance has been evasive and cagey over the phone, joins the adventure so she can confront her ghosting guy in person. And so off they go, embarking on a cross-country adventure complete with romance, disappointment, self-discovery — and karaoke. 

With a budget of only $12 million (which would yield a gross of more than $60 million at the box office), Crossroads has an intimate atmosphere, probably fostered by the majority-female crew put together by Davis and producer Ann Carli.

Davis’ past experience as a music video director is apparent in the crackling energy of the musical scenes, which include the now-famous rendition of Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll,” as well as joyous, rambunctious sing-alongs to Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like A Woman,” and Sheryl Crowe’s “If It Makes You Happy.” But the movie’s handling of complicated female friendships, teen pregnancy, sexual assault, race, and ambition feels like it is all Rhimes. Saldana, who reportedly flubbed her audition and flew across the country to plead with Davis for the part, is a scene stealer, and her performance as a Type-A, popular girl arguably set the stage for a future Rhimes creation: Scandal’s Olivia Pope. 

But that’s not the only place where Crossroads exhibits Rhimes’ signature style; it’s not a film that’s afraid of dramatic, bordering on unbelievable twists and turns. Mimi’s arc features her first coming to terms with the sexual assault that led to her pregnancy, then confronting her rapist (who, in a classic Rhimes move, turns out to be Kit’s dirtbag fiance), and ultimately having a miscarriage, is one that would seem at home in an episode of Grey’s.  

Kim Cattrall’s remarkably unsentimental portrayal of Lucy’s mother, who explains that she left her daughter because she’d never really wanted to have her, feels like a rare glimpse into a type of woman who is not often seen on screen: the non-nurturing mother. And while the language Kit uses to talk about her struggle with body image may be outdated, her complicated feelings towards her weight and how it alters the way people perceive her echo a conversation we’re still having today about dieting and weight-loss as a pathway to happiness. Lucy’s eventual loss of her virginity is also notable in that, rather than veering into cliche, it’s shown as a moment of empowerment — all the more notable considering Spears’ own complicated history in discussing her virginity with the media. 

This frankness around complicated subjects did not go unnoticed by everyone at the time — just by critics. “I like the fact that it’s very emotional and deals with real teen issues,” Spears said in a 2002 interview. “Teenagers can see that and feel like whatever is going in their world — they’re not alone.”

In 2002, Spears was barely out of her own teenage years, and found herself at a crossroads of her own.. Fresh off the mega-success of three consecutive albums — 1998’s …Baby One More Time, 2000’s Oops…I Did It Again, and 2001’s Britney — she was wildly successful, and ranked at the top of Forbes’ list of most powerful celebrities With a lucrative endorsement deal with Pepsi, and a high-profile relationship with fellow Mickey Mouse Club alum Justin Timberlake, the world was at her feet. But although she was idolized, she wasn’t respected. The people around her exploited her fame and talent, but didn’t seem to care much about what was going on beneath the surface. Turbulent years lay ahead for Spears: A quick marriage, two kids, a messy divorce and custody battle would all take place within five years of Crossroads’ release, ultimately leading to Spears’ involuntary commitment to a mental health facility in 2008.  Although Spears now has a thriving career, thanks in part to the stability of a long-running performance residency in Las Vegas, she does not have control over her assets; her father is her conservator, almost as if Spears is a perpetual teenager, unable to ever get out from under anyone’s thumb, unable to escape the all-encompassing male gaze.

In Crossroads, the male gaze is sometimes present — whenever Lucy, Kit, and Mimi are on-stage, the camera pans over their legs and midriffs, laid bare by tiny skirts and crop tops. But other times, like when they’re goofing around in their car, sharing memories and disappointments over mini-bar booze, or just singing for pleasure, that male gaze is gone. Sweatpants and messy buns replace the low-rise jeans, and, even if only for a moment, they get to be teenagers, existing in that rare place where all that matters is their own thoughts and feelings. Not quite girls whose future is dictated by overbearing parents, and not quite women, despite what some critics may have wished, but somewhere in between. 

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Update: Parasite took home an amazing — and beyond deserved — four Academy Awards at the Oscars. It is the first non-English language film to win Best Picture, and its four wins tie Parasite for the most Oscars won by a foreign film in a night. Bong Joon-Ho won Best Director and called for the audience to celebrate the cast, which was snubbed in the acting categories. The film’s other two awards were Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay. And, to quote the director: “I’m ready to drink tonight.”

#Oscars Moment: Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won win Best Original Screenplay for @ParasiteMovie pic.twitter.com/Rf6f8a929Z

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 10, 2020

The original story continues below.

With just a few days to go until the 92nd Academy Awards, speculation about which movie will take home the coveted Best Picture prize is at an all-time high. Ten films are nominated, but in recent weeks the race has really narrowed down to two front-runners: Sam Mendes’ World War I epic 1917, and Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean class thriller Parasite, also in the running for Best International Film. But which is more likely to win?

1917, a late December entry to awards season, has won four major guild awards, including the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture, and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing — Feature Film. In addition, it took home Best Motion Picture: Drama at the Golden Globes, and the Best Film Award at the BAFTAs over the weekend. Objectively, the movie has earned every win necessary to nearly guarantee an award on Sunday. 

Meanwhile, Parasite has won more overall awards, many of which hold the extra significance of having made history. Last May, it became the first Korean film to take home the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Earlier this month, it earned a standing ovation and won Best Ensemble Cast at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (becoming the first non-English film to do so), and Best Original Screenplay at the Writers’ Guild Awards. It’s also grossed a remarkable $33.2 million in the United States, a record-breaking number for a foreign film, and a testament to its genuine popularity among American audiences. 

It’s not the first time that a foreign-language film has been nominated in those two categories. Parasite marks the eleventh movie to hold that honor, joining Grande Illusion (1938, France), 

Z (1969, Algeria), The Emigrants (1972, Sweden), Cries and Whispers (1973, Sweden), Il Postino (1995, Italy), Life Is Beautiful (1998, Italy), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000, Taiwan), Letters From Iwo Jima (2006, United States, but primarily in Japanese), Amour (2012, Austria), and Roma (2018, Mexico). 

What’s different about this year? First off, the categories themselves. In April, the Academy announced that it was changing the name of the category from Best Foreign-Language Film to Best International Feature Film in an effort to be more inclusive. 

“We have noted that the reference to ‘Foreign’ is outdated within the global filmmaking community,” Larry Karaszewski and Diane Weyermann, co-chairs of the International Feature Film Committee, said in a press release announcing the change. “We believe that International Feature Film better represents this category, and promotes a positive and inclusive view of filmmaking, and the art of film as a universal experience.”

But despite the name-change, the rules have remained exactly the same, which has already led to controversy. In November, Nigeria’s first submission to the Oscars was disqualified because most of the dialogue was in English, the country’s official language, leading to widespread discussion over what really defines an “international film.” Is 1917 — written, directed and starring British people — an international film? Is 2011 Best Picture winner The King’s Speech? What about The Artist, the French-produced but silent winner of 2012? Or do they not count, because they fit into the mold of what we consider a mainstream Oscar film? If one follows the Academy’s own guidelines, why shouldn’t a film like Genevieve Nnaji’s Lionheart compete alongside other English-language films rather than as an “international” entry?

As for inclusion, well, that too has been controversial. No other film — except perhaps Roma — has come this close to possibly winning both Best International Feature Film and Best Picture simultaneously. And it’s making some people in the industry uncomfortable. In an op/ed at the San Francisco Chronicle, critic Mick Lasalle argued that making foreign-language films eligible for both awards gives them an advantage over English-language films, which can only win once. A brutally honest Academy voter, speaking to the Hollywood Reporter under condition of anonymity, put it more bluntly: “Parasite is beautifully done, but it didn’t hold up the second time, and I don’t think foreign films should be nominated with the regular films.”

The idea that “regular films” are in English automatically marginalizes foreign-languge films as “other.” And that brings me to the biggest difference between Parasite and the films mentioned above. Unlike the majority of previous non-English language films nominated for Best Picture (Roma, Z, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon being notable exceptions), its protagonists aren’t white. The Academy has been infamously slow to adapt with a changing Hollywood landscape. All but one — Cynthia Erivo, nominated for Harriet — of the nominees in acting categories is white. Parasite’s SAG win was that much more significant because it recognized the talent of its cast, which has largely been left out of the acting awards conversation. 

The subtext here is that it’s all well and good for non-English movies with non-white casts to win in the category that is reserved for them. It’s even fine for individual foreign directors to win, like Alfonso Cuarón did in 2019 for Roma, although that category has a different barrier to entry: gender. But to win against big American films, with majority white actors? That challenges the status quo, something Academy members, and the larger Hollywood film establishment, wants to avoid at all costs.

Still, those objections lose steam when one considers that no non-English language film has ever won Best Picture — Parasite would be the first. Far from being at an advantage, films nominated in the Best International Feature Film category face an extra barrier to entry. The fact that Parasite has managed to get this far is a testament to just how good it really is. 

A Best Picture win for Parasite, a movie that celebrates society’s underdogs, against establishment Goliaths like Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, or to a lesser degree, 1917, smacks of poetic justice. The question remains whether the Academy is in the mood to root for David. 

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Joaquin Phoenix capped off an awards season sweep with his first-ever Oscar win at the 92nd Academy Awards. And true to form, he did so with a speech equal parts moving and kooky. Much like he did his viral BAFTAs speech, Phoenix used his platform to call for for change, asking those in the audience to take stock of their own role in perpetuating injustice.

“When we use love and compassion as our guiding principals, we can create systems of change. … Not when we cancel each other out for past mistakes, but when we guide each other to grow, for redemption, that is the best of humanity,” he said.

There was also something about a cow, and a tirade against… milk?

Joaquin Phoenix is really out here at the #Oscars lecturing us about how we oppress cows for their milk pic.twitter.com/LmOmqVMXME

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) February 10, 2020

Though Joker has been criticized for its sympathetic portrayal of white male rage, it’s nice to see Phoenix using his time on-stage to acknowledge his privilege, and vow to be an agent for change.

But the most emotional moment came towards the end, when the actor choked up talking about his older brother River Phoenix, who died of a drug overdose outside a West Hollywood club in 1993.

“When he was 17 years old, my brother wrote this lyric,” Phoenix said. “He said: ‘Run to the rescue with love, and peace will follow.'”

River, also an actor, began his career at the age of ten, before breaking out in 1986’s Stand By Me. He earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in 1988’s Running on Empty, and co-starred with Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho in 1991.

“When he was 17, my brother wrote this lyric, he said ‘run to the rescue with love and peace will follow.'” #Joker‘s Joaquin Phoenix shares a lyric from his late brother, River Phoenix while accepting best actor at the #Oscars https://t.co/ERIZdYiUX1 pic.twitter.com/mhIAd6bQCd

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 10, 2020

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On January 5, Awkafina kicked off the 2020 awards season by making history as the first woman of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress. Don’t expect any such moment at the Academy Awards this year. The 2020 Oscar nominations, announced on January 13 by John Cho and Issa Rae, are once again overwhelmingly white. 

Among those snubbed? Jennifer Lopez, whose performance in Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers caused souls to leave their earthly bodies; Lupita Nyong’o, who slipped into the skins of not one, but two characters in Jordan Peele’s Us; Jamie Foxx as a wrongfully convicted man in Just Mercy; Eddie Murphy, who played Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite Is My Name, a movie about the lack of Black representation in mainstream film; Alfre Woodard, who gave a stomach-churning turn as prison warden struggling with the burden of the death penalty in Clemency; and Awkwafina, who gave one of the most emotional and tender performances of the year in Lulu Wang’s The Farewell (a film that was completely shut out of the nominations). 

Seeing overwhelmingly white acting categories in 2020 is frustrating, and frankly, unacceptable. The Academy has largely followed in the footsteps of the BAFTAs, whose nominations of all-white acting nominees sparked outrage just last week. But even so, Awkwafina’s snub is particularly disappointing — though not surprising — given the Academy’s track record. With Awkwafina out of the running, 2020 will mark the 85th year without a nominee of Asian descent.  Only one woman of Asian descent has ever been nominated in the Best Actress category: Merle Oberon, nominated in 1935 for her turn as Kitty Vane in The Dark Angel. She did not win. 

Asian actors have historically been one of the most underrepresented groups in Hollywood, with only 1% of nominees across categories in the show’s 92-year history (including four for Ben Kingsley, who is of Gujarati Indian descent). This year tipped the balance slightly, with nods to Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, nominated for Best International Feature Film, Best Director, and Best Picture, among others. Still, had she been nominated, Awkwafina would have been the first American actress of East Asian descent ever to be so honored by the Academy, a statistic that is hard to stomach after years of lip service to inclusion and representation by an organization that fails to show results year after year. 

To make matters worse, the Best Actress race wasn’t even the Academy’s only chance to make history this year. Only two Latina women have ever won the award for Best Supporting Actress: Rita Moreno for West Side Story in 1962, and Mercedes Ruehl for The Fisher King in 1992. (No Latina actress has ever won Best Actress, and only two have been nominated: Catalina Sandino Moreno for Maria Full of Grace in 2004, and Yalitza Aparicio for Roma in 2019.) With J.Lo snubbed, that won’t change anytime soon. 

A 2019 study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative showed that in the 100 top-grossing films of 2018, 33 movies were missing Black women characters, 54 had no Asian or Asian American characters, and 70 had no Latina characters. Awkwafina and J.Lo’s performances — specific representations of a particular American experience — gave voice to communities too often silenced by the larger Hollywood establishment. And once again, the Academy has turned a blind eye. 

With that in mind, it’s worth taking a look at the kinds of movies and performances the Academy did see fit to honor this year. Portraits of toxic masculinity and the tortured male psyche have been at the forefront of awards season, with movies like Todd Phillips’ Joker (which topped the nominations with 11 nods), Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time..in Hollywood, Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory, James Grey’s Ad Astra, James Mangold’s Ford. v. Ferrari, and to a certain extent Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and Sam Mendes’ 1917 (co-written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns). 

Both films with mostly-women casts to receive nominations — Little Women and Bombshell — tell stories based on the white female experience, one that yes, is less represented than the male-focused narratives mentioned above, but still far more prevalent than those by and about people, and especially women, of color.

It’s especially concerning that this all comes after a much publicized push by the Academy to diversify its membership. Over 2018 and 2019, 1,770 new members were added to the Hollywood voting body, with a special emphasis on women, people of color, and younger artists. Among those joining the Academy’s ranks in 2019 were Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Letitia Wright, Claire Foy, Sterling K. Brown, Tom Holland, Gemma Chan, Lady Gaga, Nisha Ganatra, and Adele, bringing the number of women up to 32% (from 25% in 2015), with and the number of people of color to 16% (from 8% in 2015). 

Monday’s nominations confirmed that we’re in for yet another Oscars ceremony without any women directors nominated, and with many of those who made 2019 such a great year for film stuck watching their white peers accept awards they should have been nominated for. It’s easy to get discouraged, so I leave you on a positive note. If she wins, Cynthia Erivo, nominated for Best Actress for her performance as Harriet Tubman in Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet, would be the second Black woman ever to take home the award, after Halle Berry in 2003. She’d also be the the youngest-ever person to EGOT. 

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Sorry, Ricky Gervais. Michelle Williams had a political acceptance speech to give and nevertheless, she persisted.

Onstage at the 77th Annual Golden Globes to receive the award for Actress In A Mini-series or Motion Picture for TV for her performance as Gwen Verdon in FX’s Fosse/Verdon, Williams used her time to celebrate a woman’s right to choose.

Williams, who announced her own pregnancy on December 30, launched into a passionate call for for women to vote in the 2020 election, emphasizing the impact that choice has had on her own life.

Read her powerful speech in full below:

“When you put this in someone’s hands, you’re acknowledging the choices that they make as an actor, moment by moment, scene by scene, day by day, but you’re also acknowledging the choices they made as a person: the education they pursued, the training they sought, the hours they put in. I’m grateful for the acknowledgment of the choices I’ve made, and I’m also grateful to have lived in a moment in our society where choice exists, because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice. I’ve tried my very best to live a life of my own making, and not just a series of events that happened to me, but one I can stand back and look at, and recognize my handwriting all over, sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise, but one that I’ve carved with my own hand. And I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose. To choose when to have my children, and with whom.

I know my choices look different than yours, but thank god or whoever you pray to that we live in a country founded on a principle that I am free to live by my freedom and you are free to live by yours. So women from 18 to 118, please, when it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest. It’s what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them. Don’t forget, we are the largest voting body in this country. Let’s make it look more like us. “

Women in the room were quick to show support, but no one was as enthusiastic as presenter Tiffany Haddish:

Tiffany Haddish is all of us after Michelle Williams’ speech #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/H4CGKMtWoE

— Lindsey Kupfer (@Lindseykupfer) January 6, 2020

Well, okay, except for maybe Williams’ best friend Busy Philipps, who posted to her Instagram stories earlier today that she hoped Williams would win, and that she was proud to “celebrate friends that do amazing work, and use their platform for amazing things.”

get you a friend who looks at you the way busy philipps looks at michelle williams when she gives a speech #goldenglobes pic.twitter.com/JD6QfeUNmN

— ilana kaplan (@lanikaps) January 6, 2020

Williams ended the speech by thanking new fiance Thomas Kail and her daughter, Matilda.

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