The Oscars. Whether you love it, hate it, or have absolutely no opinion, it’s easily one of the most coveted social institutions for the film and movie industry. Fancy gowns, daring fashion, and an iconic red carpet, this year’s Academy Awards will be held next Sunday on ABC.

Due to the pandemic, the awards show will continue with certain safety measures in place.

An article by Bryan Alexander for USA Today outlined some of those safety measures, which included all attendees, including nominated stars, guests, and presenters, getting COVID-19 tested and quarantining before the event. The red carpet aspect of the show will be largely reduced.

One of the producers for the awards show Steven Soderbergh said, “…masks are going to play a very important role in the story of this evening… If that’s cryptic, it’s meant to be. But that topic is very central to the narrative.”

An article by Lisa Respers France for CNN summarized this year’s nominations, and explained that more women were nominated this year than have been in the past.

“Seventy women received a total of 76 nominations,” including two female Directing category nominations, Emerald Fennell and Chloe Zhao. Zhao, nominated for directing her film “Nomadland”, is the “first woman of color to be nominated in the category,” wrote Respers.

The Oscars have come under scrutiny for their lack of diversity in recent years, a fact not lost on students at SSU.

Former student Meg Nguyen said, “Honestly I haven’t really kept up with the Oscars and don’t think a lot of the past awards really matter because there’s a lot of history of only certain people of certain races or backgrounds receiving awards and it feels like a big demographic of people aren’t considered.”

While the institution has a lot more work to do to include underrepresented communities in film and entertainment, the awards show released a statement last year explaining how they have been taking steps to be more inclusive of women and people of color, a promise the Oscars originally outlined in 2016. 

Danielle Greene, a fourth year Kinesiology student at SSU pointed out how films, actors, and directors in the horror genre generally don’t get the same kind of attention or recognition as films in other genres.

“Toni Collette’s performance in ‘Hereditary’ was insane yet she gets zero recognition. I also think ‘Get Out’ was nominated for a couple of things and it only won like best screenplay or something like that? ‘Get Out’ is such an influential film and sparked so many conversations about race (and it was Jordan Peele’s directorial debut) yet it only won best screenplay.”

“Get Out” was the only horror-genre film to be nominated in 2018, and Peele’s other horror film “Us”, released in 2019, received no nominations. When going through the Oscars archives, not many true horror films have even been nominated in the last few years.

While the Oscars have been problematic in past years, other awards shows like the Grammys have been boycotted by musicians like The Weeknd due to lack of voting transparency and racial biases.

Corey O’Driscoll, a fourth year psychology student, said, “The Oscars have seemed to be less of a popularity contest than something like the Grammys; the fact that foreign films can grab a title like Parasite did last year and that there is a section devoted to foreign films in general makes me feel like whoever’s pulling the strings might have actually done their research.”