Angela Bassett IS NOT Just Responding To Her Oscar Loss

Okay, so Angela Bassett did not demonstrate thrill at losing a competitive Oscar. Why can’t she just be happy that she was nominated and be happy for the recipient Jamie Lee Curtis?

Let’s explore.

A Telling Direct-ion

It is 2023 and not a single Black woman has been nominated for Best Director at the Oscar’s. Over the past five years, women have seen compounding gains in this category, both in wins and nominations. For example:

• In 2019, Greta Gerwig was nominated for Best Director.
• In 2020, two women were nominated for Best Director, one of them (Chloe Zhao) won. Chloe was the first woman of color to win Best Director.
• In 2021, another woman (Jane Campion) won Best Director.

Prior to these gender gains in the Directors race, only four other women directors had even been nominated for a directing Oscar: Linda Wertmüller in 1977, Jane Campion in 1993, Sofia Coppola in 2003, and Kathryn Bigelow in 2009. In other words, we shouldn’t be celebrating four women being nominated since 2019, but considering the landscape over the first several decades of Oscar history, the momentum is hard to ignore.

Outside of gender and prior to this years dual win for the The Daniels, only one…