‘Parasite’ and Bong Joon Ho win big at the Oscars

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Most of the diversity at the 2020 Academy Awards in Hollywood occurred during last night’s on-stage performances. That said, there were still some breakthrough moments.

The always resplendent Janelle Monae opened the show with a musical tribute to the mostly white, mostly male nominees. She began with a nod to Mister Rogers on a recreated version of his show’s iconic set, even sharing a moment with Tom Hanks, who recently portrayed Fred Rogers in the biopic, Won’t You Be My Neighbor. Pose’s Billy Porter created a mood by singing Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing,” and then joined Monae in an adapted-for-the-Oscars version of her 2009 song “Come Alive.”

Monae was surrounded by dancers who were dressed as the nominees—so many Jokers, 1917 soldiers, and Little Women—but also by characters from films that had been overlooked. Dancers dressed up in Queen & Slim, Us, and Dolomite Is My Name costumes were the not-so-subtle reminders that plenty of worthy work had been left on the sidelines this year.

“Tonight we celebrate the art of storytelling,” said Monae in her introduction. “The misfits, the outcasts, the misunderstood, those voices long deprived. Be loud, be seen, be lit, be heard, because tonight we come alive!”

But only some of them, get it?

As I thought about it later, greenlighting that number—and the similar jibes then yet to come—felt like a cynical wink from the Academy, a performative concession to a problem not solved. The obligatory diversity panel at every conference. The blackeyed peas hot dish in corporate cafeterias during Black History Month. The retention issue that gets a line item, but not a budget.

Monae, like many of the other presenters or performers, said the quiet parts out loud. “We celebrate women who directed great films!” shouted Monae, leaving unsung the fact that none of them were nominated. Then finally: “Everyone come ALIVE,” she belted out. “Because Oscars are so WHITE!”

The Academy has worked hard to diversify their membership ranks, and more diversity in the industry may eventually help. But as these two anonymous Hollywood Reporter interviews with Academy voters show, many seem to treat it more like a right than a privilege, a subjective act performed without rigor or science, only to settle on stories mostly about themselves.

They’re not even required to watch all the films.

“Quentin Tarantino’s film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, was even better the second time than the first. I was in L.A. in the ’60s, and I thought he captured that era perfectly,” said one female voter and member of the Academy’s actor branch in her interview. On Best Director: “I thought Quentin did a great job, and I want an American director to win.” She also didn’t like American Factory because it showed Americans “as big fat slobs.” She voted for Honeyland in the documentary category, “because it’s a beautiful story about saving the environment that is told so simply, without hammering us over the head like Greta whatever.” She didn’t vote for an Animated Short—the category that included Hair Love—because she didn’t have time to watch any.

One male Academy member from the producer ranks did finish the movies, not that it mattered. 

“We all have our ups and downs in this business—I’m not at the high-point of my career right now, so I could identify very much with the characters, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gave me hope,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “And it leaves you thinking about what could have been in a better world: What would Sharon Tate’s life have been if this hadn’t happened? What would [Roman] Polanski’s life have been?! It puts tears in my eyes when I think about it.” Also: “Hair Love, to me, was shallow—I didn’t get it.”

It confirmed the worst fears of many observers that a movie like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was destined to win because it was about Hollywood being in love with the sound of its own mythmaking.

This is all partly why it was such a surprise that Parasite, the fairy-tale-like story of greed and inequality from director Bong Joon Ho, won so decisively. Bong won or shared four big awards: Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature, and most pointedly, Best Director, and Best Picture. Parasite is the first non-English language film to win Best Picture and the first award for South Korean cinema. 

Bong also bested the broader cultural zeitgeist. “Three of the four most-nominated movies—The Irishman, Joker, and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood—are stories about white men who feel culturally imperiled,” observes Mark Harris in Vanity Fair. “The fourth, 1917, is about white men who are literally imperiled.”

Parasite’s Best Picture win was a legitimate breakthrough and an opportunity to demonstrate how stories from all cultures can have universal resonance—and how, as Bong clearly believes, that proximity without intention will never be enough to drive true equity or inclusion.

He leaves you thinking about what can be in a better world.

“We currently live in this fantasy that people are equal, that the class system is obsolete, that we live in a free democratic society,” he recently told Fortune. “I think the second half of this film shows the brutal truth that we still live in a cruel, classist society where these borderlines can never be eradicated. Jobs like tutoring, housekeeping, and driving create situations where people of different classes come so close to each other that they can smell one another, but they still can’t overcome the line that divides them.”

Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com