What can we learn from this year’s Oscar nominations?

It’s Oscar nom­i­na­tions announce­ment day, and all of Hol­ly­wood is a‑titter while all of Twit­ter is a‑angry. It was a year of many notable snubs, and while there’s ample cause for fum­ing, there’s also a lot to cel­e­brate. (In par­tic­u­lar, the State­side suprema­cy of a cer­tain over­seas import.)

With so much to dis­cuss, let’s dis­pense with any fur­ther pre­am­ble and get right down to brass tacks with the five most impor­tant take­aways from today’s slate of nom­i­nees. Read on, and cal­i­brate your out­rage accordingly:

Every year, a faint sense of dread hov­ers around the act­ing cat­e­gories, as the pub­lic won­ders whether the nom­i­nat­ing body will ush­er in a repeat of the #OscarsSoWhite deba­cle from 2016. That year’s all-cau­casian array of act­ing nom­i­nees betrayed an incu­rios­i­ty and close-mind­ed­ness from the vot­ers, while also speak­ing to the pauci­ty of good roles for actors and actress­es of color.

It’s always a push-and-pull between those two issues – is it that they’re not nom­i­nat­ing the good per­for­mances, or that the industry’s not pro­vid­ing them? – but this year land­ed deci­sive­ly on the for­mer side. Lupi­ta Nyong’o pulled dou­ble duty in Us, Awk­wa­fi­na broke down the lan­guage bar­ri­er in The Farewell, Song Kang-ho pro­vid­ed a cen­tral sup­port col­umn in Par­a­site, and Jen­nifer Lopez left a smol­der­ing crater of Hus­tlers. It was a ban­ner year for act­ing, irre­spec­tive of race.

And yet the nom­i­na­tions tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. The lone non-white per­former in the run­ning is Cyn­thia Eri­vo for her turn as Har­ri­et Tub­man in Har­ri­et, a film pil­lo­ried by many crit­ics and yet embraced by the Acad­e­my. On social media, a hand­ful of black writ­ers have already not­ed the unseem­ly optics of shun­ning the sharply crit­i­cal Us for the his­tor­i­cal revi­sions of Har­ri­et, decried by some as a white sav­ior film.

(And over in the direct­ing race, it’s anoth­er all-men line­up, point­ed­ly referred to by announc­er Issa Rae as she said, ​“Con­grat­u­la­tions to these men.”)

One of this year’s unlike­li­est suc­cess sto­ries comes to us from the Balka­ns, where an ancient tra­di­tion of bee­keep­ing still per­sists today, though it’s far from flour­ish­ing. The decline of this prac­tice and its glob­al impli­ca­tions filled out the doc­u­men­tary Hon­ey­land, an excep­tion­al­ly well-reviewed release that’s gained sub­stan­tial trac­tion on lit­tle more than word-of-mouth alone.

Hon­ey­land shocked all peo­ple invest­ed in such things by scor­ing nom­i­na­tions in both cat­e­gories for which it was eli­gi­ble, land­ing in the Best Inter­na­tion­al Film race as well as Best Doc­u­men­tary Fea­ture. This marks the first time in Acad­e­my his­to­ry that one film has gone two-for-two like this, though plen­ty of doc­u­men­taries have been sub­mit­ted by their rep­re­sen­ta­tive coun­try for con­sid­er­a­tion in the past. A bril­liant movie with a lim­it­ed yet devot­ed view­er­ship, this is exact­ly the bump in pro­file that Hon­ey­land deserves to enjoy.

The true break­out of the morn­ing hails from Korea, the home of genre mae­stro Bong Joon-ho. His crowd-pleas­ing crit­i­cal dar­ling Par­a­site racked up six nom­i­na­tions, includ­ing nods for Best Pic­ture, Best Direc­tor, Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play, and Best Inter­na­tion­al Film. In every instance, it’s a first for a release from Korea.

Whether Par­a­site has a shot at the crown still has to be seen, but it’s a major devel­op­ment sig­nal­ing a rapid glob­al­iza­tion of the Amer­i­can film econ­o­my and cul­ture. Take a look around the States, and it goes beyond that, too; between the dom­i­na­tion of boy band BTS on the radio air­waves and the increas­ing ubiq­ui­ty of high-end skin­care prod­ucts, Kore­an cul­ture has per­me­at­ed the Amer­i­can zeit­geist in fas­ci­nat­ing and unex­pect­ed ways.

There’s always acri­mo­ny over Best Pic­ture, the most argued-about award of the evening (remem­ber Green Book? I don’t!), but this year’s picks fall along more clear­ly defined fault lines than we’ve seen in years past. The emerg­ing Best Pic­ture nar­ra­tive pits the box-office-friend­ly and crit­i­cal­ly-reviled against the end-of-year list favorites.

This is to say that there are ​“1917, Jok­er, Jojo Rab­bit, and Ford V Fer­rari” peo­ple and ​“The Irish­man, Par­a­site, Mar­riage Sto­ry, Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, and Lit­tle Women” peo­ple. Last year’s Green Book con­tin­gent may find kin­dred spir­its in the for­mer camp, defined in part by its affin­i­ty for films with con­test­ed polit­i­cal con­tent. But the con­tro­ver­sy that Jok­er seems to spread every­where like a Midas touch of unend­ing debate could just pow­er it to the stage at the end of Oscar night.

Some loose insights from oth­er cat­e­gories in which we’ve wit­nessed some shake-ups: though pre­sumed a lock by many prog­nos­ti­ca­tors, Mati Diop​‘s Atlantics got frozen out of the Best Inter­na­tion­al Film cat­e­go­ry despite a push from back­ers at Net­flix, who pre­sum­ably put more of their eggs in the Irish­man and Mar­riage Sto­ry baskets.

The cin­e­matog­ra­phy race sin­gled out Jarin Blaschke, DoP on the oth­er­wise un-nom­i­nat­ed The Light­house. It’s the lone nom­i­na­tion racked up by A24, an unusu­al­ly weak show­ing from the stu­dio that claimed the Best Pic­ture stat­uette just a few years ago, but it’s also a refresh­ing­ly dialed-in choice from the nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee, rec­og­niz­ing the tech­ni­cal labor that went into cre­at­ing the dis­tinc­tive anti­quat­ed look of the nau­ti­cal night terror.

Anoth­er pleas­ant sur­prise: Rian John­son, who snuck into the Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play cat­e­go­ry for his dev­il­ish­ly clever mur­der mys­tery Knives Out. (The writ­ers have a good track record with cher­ryp­ick­ing left-of-cen­ter releas­es, hav­ing not so long ago nom­i­nat­ed The Lob­ster before Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos became Oscar’s gold­en boy.)

And while Dis­ney may have all the mon­ey in the world, they haven’t yet got­ten the Oscars under their thumb; in the Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture cat­e­go­ry, once Disney’s pri­ma­ry domain, their big awards horse Frozen II failed to even break into the race. Of course they’ve got big­ger fish to fry, Dis­ney acqui­si­tion Fox Search­light hav­ing released Jojo Rab­bit, but it’s still a sign of how the Mouse House has shift­ed pri­or­i­ties away from ani­ma­tion to live-action production.

The Acad­e­my Awards broad­cast will take place on 9 February.