At this point, it’s fair to say that the Academy Awards is no longer the exact same institution that it was 15 or 20 years ago. It certainly hasn’t avoided its fair share of out-of-touch gaffes, but you can see a demonstrable effort to recontextualize what is worthy of an Oscar – Parasite’s Best Picture win reminded the world that remarkable stories exist outside the bounds of the United States and the English language, and Everything Everywhere All At Once back in 2023 became astoundingly the first science-fiction film to ever win Best Picture (only the second if you count Guillermo del Toro’s Gothic romance The Shape of Water). And yet, the sobering reality is that the Academy still has room to grow in terms of recognizing the contributions of groups typically overlooked, as well as the importance of genres ignored by mainstream tastemakers.
The success of last year’s Sinners reached its zenith at the 98th Academy Awards, where Coogler became the second Black screenwriter to win Best Original Screenplay (the first being Jordan Peele for Get Out, another genre love-letter). At first glance, it feels like the historic success of the film came out of thin air, or was the result of a sudden shift in the Academy’s judgment. But the walls broken down during last night’s Oscars didn’t come out of thin air – on the contrary, they’re the culmination of a pattern that stretches back to 2015 with Coogler’s first Oscar-nominated film, a pattern of uplifting Black narratives while also honoring the rousing, intoxicating power of genre cinema and escapism.
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