February 29, 2016

The 88th Academy Awards were presented at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California, last night, following one of the most controversial Oscars seasons in recent memory. The Academy Awards are presented annually for outstanding achievements in filmmaking. The awards are supervised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with headquarters in Beverly Hills, California. Oscars are awarded in up to 27 categories.

Academy Awards are presented annually for outstanding achievements in filmmaking. Winners of an Academy Award receive a gold-plated statue commonly called an Oscar, shown here. Credit: © Richard Levine, Alamy Images

Spotlight won for best picture of the year. The film tells the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Roman Catholic Archdiocese. Alejandro González Iñárritu won the Oscar as best director for The Revenant, about a frontiersman on a fur trading expedition in the 1820′s who fights for survival after being mauled by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team. It was the Mexican director’s second Oscar win in a row for best director. Iñárritu won as best director in 2015 for Birdman. Leonardo DiCaprio won the Academy Award as best actor for his performance as the lead in The Revenant. It was the actor’s first Oscar win after five other nominations. Brie Larson received the Academy Award as best actress for her performance as a woman who is abducted, held against her will, raped, and gives birth to a boy in Room. Mark Rylance won the best supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of a man who is captured for espionage against the United States on behalf of the Soviet Union (now Russia) during the Cold War in Bridge of Spies. The Academy Award for best supporting actress went to Alicia Vikander for her performance as the wife of a transgender pioneer in The Danish Girl. The night’s big winner was Mad Max: Fury Road, with six awards, for costume design, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, production design, sound editing, and sound mixing.

A number of Hollywood’s most prominent African American stars boycotted the Oscars ceremony to protest the Academy’s lack of diversity. After the Academy announced its Oscar nominees on January 14, it was quickly noted that only white actors and actresses were nominated in the top four acting categories for the second year in a row. The Twitter hashtag #OscarSoWhite, which began last year, soon saw a resurgence among users of the social networking website. Among the most outspoken Hollywood celebrities calling for a boycott were director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith. On January 18, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, Pinkett Smith announced on Facebook and Lee announced on Instragram that they would not attend the Oscars ceremony with their spouses. Lee’s film Chi-Raq failed to win any nominations, while Pinkett Smith’s husband, Will Smith, who had been expected by some to be a best actor contender for his turn in the biopic Concussion, was also snubbed for an Oscar. Other notable omissions were British actor Idris Elba, who was projected to secure a best supporting actor nomination for his performance as an African warlord in Beasts of No Nation; Michael B. Jordan, who portrayed a boxer in the Rocky sequel Creed; and the cast of the biopic Straight Outta Compton, about the influential rap group N.W.A.

Many protesters called for the evening’s host, African American comedian and actor Chris Rock, to join the boycott. Instead Rock, who had also hosted the awards in 2005, made the Academy’s lack of diversity the focus of his humorous opening monologue and the butt of many of his jokes and bits during the evening. On Jan. 22, 2016, the Academy announced that it would overhaul its membership in order to promote diversity, aiming to double its number of female and minority members by the year 2020.

Other World Book articles:

• Birdman Soars at 87th Academy Awards (February 23, 2015) – A Behind the Headlines article
• See also Back in time articles for Motion picture from 1922 through 2014