Will Smith and his slap have for sure got the attention after the Oscars night. However, the mediatic impact that the unmotivated violence gets is inevitably overshadowing the real winners of the night.
In particular, the winning of Jane Campion as best director for CODA is for sure one of the best moments of the night: the director is the third woman to win this award, following last year Chloé Zhao and Kathryn Bigelow in 2010, marking an important step towards to equal representation and appreciation of women’s work in Hollywood.
In the last years, Hollywood has tried to address their hostility and injustice during the famous Oscar night, giving space not only to more diverse artists like Iñárritu, Cuarón, Zhao herself, but to all women as well: for the Award as Best director, there are been 8 women nominated, 5 only in the last years, and 3 wins.
It is of course an attempt for the Hollywood industry to expand into a worldwide market and embrace a more and more sensitive audience, and the predictable and politically correct wins serve as proof. However, the increasingly bigger attention that the industry is putting on women and this year’s win of Campion still represent huge achievements for great storytellers who are allowed, more now than ever, to share their art.
