Zero Women Are Nominated for Best Director, And Other Terrible Decisions from the 2018 Golden Globes
The 2018 Golden Globe nominations are out, and as ever, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has made some choices.
We already had early signs that the Golden Globe nominations would be … shall we say, interesting, when Get Out, Jordan Peele’s tremendous horror film about being a black man in America, was inexplicably classified in the Comedy category. And sure enough, the Golden Globes’ decision-making has been less-than-progressive in many categories this year.
Perhaps most glaringly, the nominees for Best Director are yet again all men.
- Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
- Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
- Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
- Ridley Scott, All The Money in the World
- Steven Spielberg, The Post
According to Alicia Malone, the author of Backwards and in Heels: The Past, Present And Future Of Women Working In Film, only seven women have been nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Director in its 75-year history. And only one of those seven women has ever actually won the Golden Globe for Best Director: Barbra Streisand, for Yentl in 1983.
Only seven times in 75 years have women been nominated in the Best Director category at the Golden Globes: Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow twice, Ava DuVernay and Barbra Streisand twice (who is the only woman to have won for Yentl in 1983)
— Alicia Malone (@aliciamalone) December 11, 2017
Often, the explanation that’s given when few or no women receive nominations is that there’s a pipeline problem: when women aren’t given the opportunity to direct, they can’t end up in awards contention. However, this year we had a number of women directors produce high-profile, critical darlings—and still no nominations. Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird was the best-reviewed movie in Rotten Tomatoes history, and it received four other Golden Globe nominations; Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman was a global audience favorite and box office record breaker; Dee Rees’ Mudbound has been garnering stellar reviews and Oscar buzz since it first premiered at Sundance. And that’s just to name a few!
Best Screenplay
I was also personally annoyed to see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri on the Best Screenplay nominations, rather than Get Out. While Frances McDormand’s performance has been hailed as a tour-de-force, the screenplay has been repeatedly criticized for its heavy-handedness and problematic redemption arc for a racist cop. It’s a curious choice to include in a year where there were so many other strong contenders.
Best Television Series (Comedy)
I love a lot of the nominees on this list—Black-ish, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Master of None—so I can’t complain about the category overall. But I was deeply disappointed not to see The Good Place or Brooklyn Nine-Nine get a nomination, especially since nominee Will & Grace has already received so many accolades over its long run. I understand how it happens, but I hate when nominating committees make the most boring choice.
— Definitely Not The Bad Place (@nbcthegoodplace) December 11, 2017
What were your most and least favorite nominations from today? Which shows, films, and creatives did you think were robbed?
(Via TIME and Fortune; image via Warner Bros.)
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