At long last, the Academy Awards got younger, blacker and hipper. Not all the way down the line, mind you, but enough to mark a sea change in Oscar’s inclusiveness after some high-profile hashtag criticism. Most visibly, six of the 20 acting nominees are black. Even more remarkable, a small, seemingly niche independent film about gay black men in Florida (Moonlight) was nominated for Best Picture, as well as Director, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing and Original Score.
Three of the Documentary Feature finalists center on black protagonists and race (I Am Not Your Negro, O.J.: Made in America and 13th), which was anticipated given the attention each film generated. More surprising, though, is the domination of the Adapted Screenplay category by black stories (Fences, Hidden Figures and Moonlight).

We can’t count Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins, who shot his wonderful 2008 debut Medicine for Melancholy in San Francisco, as a local filmmaker anymore, so the Bay Area contingent consists of nominees for documentary shorts: Dan Kraus (Extremis, his second nomination in this category) and U.C. Berkeley journalism grad Daphne Matziaraki (4.1 Miles). Pixar wasn’t a serious contender this year for Best Animated Feature, but is nominated for Best Animated Short (Piper); the company also took some solace in the billion dollars that Finding Dory grossed around the world.
The voting took place in the wake of the general election, and it’s conceivable that the results made some Academy members more determined to support minority artists and marginalized stories. However, Meryl Streep’s gutsy speech at the Golden Globes ceremony took place after Oscar balloting closed, so neither her remarks nor a perverse desire to troll the Tweeter-in-Chief (who dismissed La Streep as “overrated”) played a part in her Best Actress nomination for Florence Foster Jenkins.

(David Bornfriend/Courtesy of A24)
Which is all to say it’s delving much too deeply into the tea leaves to describe this batch of Oscar nominations as fallout from Donald Trump’s selection to the Oval Office. However, we can certainly anticipate that a slew of acceptance speeches on Oscar night (Feb. 26) will call out his policies and name-check social agencies and arts nonprofits. (I’ll set the over/under at five.)