Every Academy Awards brings its share of firsts. Sometimes those firsts are in categories that many, many people pay attention to, like when Halle Berry became the first black woman to win the Best Actress award 20 years ago. More often these firsts happen in categories where too much ground remains to be broken. (Did you know that no woman has yet won the Best Camera award and only two women have ever been nominated for that award?)
But viewers are also becoming increasingly aware of just how many choices are simply not available to the various artists and craftsmen who have the potential to make history. And even if we take the idea of breaking new ground for diversity out of the equation, many questions still remain about who wins awards in a rapidly changing industry. As watching movies at home via streaming services becomes more important to how many of us consume movies, the Oscars are reluctant to embrace this change even as more streaming movies are nominated for major awards.
With that in mind, here are three firsts marked by the 2022 Oscars, two of which are thanks to people who broke long-standing barriers within the academy, and one thanks to changing business models that the Oscars eventually grudgingly acknowledged.
Ariana DeBose becomes the first openly queer woman of color to win an acting Oscar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqeXEgZO_II
Ariana DeBose’s electrifying role as Anita on West Side Story has earned her a BAFTA, a Screen Actors Guild Award and now an Oscar. Prior to West Side Story, she was a Tony nominee for Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, a member of the original Hamilton ensemble, and a contestant for So You Think You Can Dance. (She was quickly eliminated. Injustice!)
DeBose is also openly queer and has spoken extensively about asserting herself as a queer woman in the entertainment industry, particularly in the run-up to her Oscar win. She is also in a relationship with another woman. She is the first queer woman to win an acting Oscar and speak openly about her queer identity.
Figuring out the nature of DeBose’s historic premiere is hazy simply because queerness isn’t something that needs to be closely monitored. But in my opinion, openness counts. Other queer women have won acting Oscars — Jodie Foster, for example, won Best Actress twice — but they weren’t publicly known as queer at the time they won. Additionally, DeBose, who has Puerto Rican, African American, and Italian ancestry, was the first openly queer woman of color to ever be nominated for an acting Oscar, let alone win.
And DeBose nodded to all of that in her acceptance speech, noting her existence as an openly queer Afro-Latina woman with an Oscar and hoping it would give hope to others like her who might not yet see a way forward. “To anyone who has ever questioned your identity, or finds yourself in the gray rooms, I promise you this: there is indeed a place for us,” she said.
Troy Kotsur is the first deaf person to win an acting Oscar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Gu0kQV5gU
Troy Kotsur’s work as Frank, a deaf father trying to keep his business afloat while supporting his hearing teenage daughter’s dream of becoming a musician, proved to be a highlight of Best Picture winner, CODA. It was the culmination of a long stage career, including several productions with the Deaf West Theater in Los Angeles, where I saw him on several occasions. (He’s a great stage actor.) However, CODA didn’t just let him break through to a wider audience. It also earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
Kotsur is the first deaf man to win an acting Oscar and only the second deaf person, after fellow CODA co-star Marlee Matlin, who won Best Actress for her work in Children of a Lesser God in 1986. Actors in the disabled community are rarely allowed to play disabled characters, as those roles often go to able-bodied actors hoping to win an Oscar. And indeed, CODA’s producers struggled to find money for their film when they insisted on only casting deaf actors as deaf characters.
Watching CODA now, it’s impossible to imagine anyone but Kotsur in the role of Frank because he brings so much warmth and beauty to the role. I’m not the biggest CODA fan in the world, but when Kotsur started winning awards for his work, even I said, “Well, of course.” He’s great in the film.
Kotsur’s speech was an emotional highlight of Oscar night and culminated in a tribute to his father. “My father, he was the best signer in our family, but he was in a car accident and became paralyzed from the neck down and couldn’t sign anymore,” Kotsur said. “Dad, I learned so much from you. I will Always Love You. You are my hero.”
CODA is the first film on a streaming service and the first film to debut on Sundance and win the Best Picture award
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38p4nX-PWlU
The Sundance favorite has been a staple at the Oscars for years. From Little Miss Sunshine to Beasts of the Southern Wild, and from Precious to Winter’s Bone, many films that have been nominated for major Oscars, and even won, premiered at January’s film festival, which celebrates independent film celebrates. But neither of those films has won Best Picture, even though Sundance has been running since 1984.
Similarly, streaming movies have had a major impact on the Oscars race in recent years, with Netflix contenders Roma (2018) and The Irishman (2019) considered the main contenders at the Oscars. But a film released by a streaming service has yet to win a Best Picture Oscar. (I’m sure some will argue that Searchlight’s 2020 Best Picture winner Nomadland also technically debuted in streaming alongside a theatrical release due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but Searchlight isn’t a streaming company.)
But here’s CODA, this year’s big winner, which is somehow both the first film to win Best Picture after a Sundance debut, and the first streaming company (Apple TV+) supported film to win Best Picture was awarded.
One could argue with the fact that CODA is a festival acquisition and wasn’t made specifically by Apple in the way, say, Netflix directly provided a significant chunk of funding to make competitor The Power of the Dog. It’s also a little rich in how CODA – which is admittedly an independently produced Sundance film – was turned into a rowdy misfit against Netflix’s giants when its Oscars campaign was underwritten by Apple, the world’s biggest company.
But none of that matters. Netflix and Prime Video both tried to win best picture but fell short. Apple has beaten them — and it’s done so with a film that’s had to hang around all year since Sundance 2021, no less. CODA is a rather modest film to make so much history, but it made so much history.