Rey Schaffner
Contributing Writer
rls6117@psu.edu

The Oscars is entering its 96th year of awarding the best of the best when it comes to the film industry, both live action and animation alike. Aside from the big name movies that have released in the year, they also give admiration towards short films, too. However, there has been a massive problem with the Oscars. One of them being the lack of representation and the lack of diversity, too. One issue that can be said about the Oscars, especially this year, is that they do not award those that should be awarded.
An example of this could be Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig being snuffed out from this year’s nominees. Margot Robbie played the iconic doll in the film all about her: “Barbie”. Whereas Greta Gerwig was the director of “Barbie”. “Barbie” was nominated for Best Picture, but fans of the movie think Margot Robbie should have been nominated for Best Actress and Greta Gertwig for Best Director. Even Ryan Gosling has stated that those two should have been nominated instead of him.

Taking a look at all of the categories, “Oppenheimer” was nominated for 13 out of 23 categories. Looking at the box office, “Barbie” had beat “Oppenheimer” by almost a landslide. “Barbie” acquired $1.446 billion whereas “Oppenheimer” $953.8 million. Remember, both of these movies came out in the same weekend and “Barbie” went on to make almost $400 million more.

Not even that, some fans of the “Godzilla” franchise are unhappy that the fa mous monster has been making films for the past 69 years, soon to be 70 in November of this year, and the Oscar’s have now finally recognized the VFX of the film. It wasn’t even nominated for Best International Film, just VFX. While some could argue that “Godzilla Minus One” has amazing visual effects, 2016’s “Shin Godzilla” could have also been a contender as well as that had one of the best visual effects for a “Godzilla” movie.

Finally, the Oscar’s has taken a while to recognize a movie with its underlying themes of LGBTQ and identity. Along with having a gay man as the main character of a full length animated feature film. “Nimona” has received the recognition it deserves, but from the entire movies that were nominated, it was the only one to front a gay man as the main character and another character that changes identity. “Nimona” also has underlying themes of the LGBTQ community when it comes to representation. Such as the main character, Nimona, can change into different forms of animals and even people. Signaling the underlying theme of trans people and even genderfluid people as well. With stating “Nimona” and the underlying themes it has, this goes into another thing the Oscar’s is known for: biases.

Because of their biases, the Oscar’s will most likely give the Best Animated Film to either “Elemental”, a Disney and Pixar movie, or “The Boy and the Heron”, because it is another Hiyao Miyazaki film. While Hiyao Miyazaki has made amazing films while at Studio Ghibli, “Spirited Away” is the only anime film to have received an Oscar. While I am not opposed to “The Boy and the Heron” to get an Oscar, I would like to see some underrepresented voices get some well deserved recognition in the hopes more and more underrepresented voices can be seen and heard.