The 2015 Oscars snub that enraged Spike Lee: “You know what? Fuck ’em”
An outspoken filmmaker and never someone who has feared calling out perceived injustice, although it has occasionally gotten him into trouble, Spike Lee has been at the forefront of criticising the Academy for their history of racial bias and omitting Black creators from being recognised.
Lee’s crusade against the Oscars began when his 1989 masterpiece, Do the Right Thing, was not nominated for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, despite receiving rave reviews and being listed at the top of many critics’ lists, including those of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. To make matters worse, the Oscars gave their ‘Best Picture’ trophy the same year to Driving Miss Daisy, a far less nuanced depiction of race relations that was written, directed, and seemingly made for older white people.
He called them out for not giving Denzel Washington the ‘Best Actor’ prize for his performance in Malcolm X, which was also denied a ‘Best Picture’ nomination. However, his anger isn’t just contained to his own work, but to all Black directors looked over, with the Oscars facing the greatest backlash in history when they unveiled their 2015 nominees, and there were no Black actors nominated.
One of the more surprising omissions was Selma, the biographical drama about Dr Martin Luther King Jr, directed by Ava DuVernay, where it did receive nominations for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Original Song’ but no ‘Best Actor’ nomination for David Oyelowo or a ‘Best Director’ nod for DuVernay. Had she been nominated, she would have been the first Black woman in history to be recognised for ‘Best Director’.
Lee expressed anger that DuVernary had been overlooked, but also expressed support by claiming that Selma would stand the test of time, similar to how Do the Right Thing had.
“Join the club!” Lee said, “That doesn’t diminish the film. Nobody’s talking about motherfuckin’ Driving Miss Daisy. That film is not being taught in film schools all across the world like Do the Right Thing is. Nobody’s discussing Driving Miss motherfuckin’ Daisy. So if I saw Ava today, I’d say, ‘You know what? Fuck ’em. You made a very good film, so feel good about that and start working on the next one.”
The Do the Right Thing omission was particularly upsetting because of the light competition, but DuVernay’s Selma was up against a stacked field of nominees, including Richard Linklater’s literal coming-of-age story Boyhood, Wes Anderson’s idosyncratic The Grand Budapest Hotel, Bennett Miller’s sports drama Foxcatcher, Morten Tyldum’s World War story The Imitation Game, and the eventual winner, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s portrait of a fallen artist Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).
Even when looking at the directors who weren’t recognised that year, it would be hard to argue that DuVernay was more deserving than David Fincher, Damien Chazelle, or Dan Gilroy for Gone Girl, Whiplash and Nightcrawler, respectively.
The Oscar trajectories that Lee and DuVernay have been on have been wildly divergent. Lee eventually won the Oscar for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ for BlacKkKlansman, for which he also received his first nominations for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Picture’, while comparatively, DuVernay’s last two films, A Wrinkle in Time and Origin, have both been considered to be disappointments.
