With Parasite’s big night, Oscar’s world gets a lit­tle bigger

It was the shot heard by awards pun­dits around the world – direc­tor Bong Joon-ho described the Acad­e­my Awards as ​“very local” in a pro­file that ran in New York Mag­a­zine at the tail-end of 2019, gen­tly laugh­ing off the ceremony’s rep­u­ta­tion as a con­fer­rer of inter­na­tion­al pres­tige. It’s an Amer­i­can movie orga­ni­za­tion, and they tend to rec­og­nize Amer­i­can movies, so he wasn’t let­ting him­self get too worked up about it all.

That nar­ra­tive is start­ing to loosen up, how­ev­er, as was clear­ly demon­strat­ed by last night’s thrilling cer­e­mo­ny and Bong’s good for­tunes in par­tic­u­lar. Par­a­site emerged as the night’s big win­ner, scoop­ing up not just the new­ly-renamed Inter­na­tion­al Film award, but also prizes for Best Direc­tor, Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play and Best Picture.

That’s just the lat­est sign of an increas­ing­ly glob­al­ized mind­set in the Acad­e­my ranks, with recent years spread­ing the wealth a bit more even­ly than in the pre­vi­ous decade. As some eagle-eyes have already not­ed on Twit­ter, it wasn’t so uncom­mon for films not in the Eng­lish lan­guage to bust into the Oscars dur­ing the ​’60s and ​’70s impor­ta­tion explo­sion, but the 2000s were a spars­er era on that front.

But that’s shift­ed over the past decade or so, far beyond Bong’s big night. The Oscar sto­ry of the pre­vi­ous decade is that of Mex­i­can excel­lence, as Best Direc­tor and Best Pic­ture stat­uettes have been hoard­ed by the likes of Ale­jan­dro Gon­za­lez Iñár­ritu, Guiller­mo del Toro, and Alfon­so Cuarón. Just last night, Anto­nio Ban­deras was wrong­ly denied the Best Actor dis­tinc­tion for his Span­ish-lan­guage per­for­mance in Pain and Glo­ry.

The past cou­ple of years have shown some oth­er promis­ing har­bin­gers of open-mind­ed­ness, from this year’s dou­ble nom­i­na­tion of Macedonia’s Hon­ey­land in both the Inter­na­tion­al Film and Doc­u­men­tary cat­e­gories to last year’s nom­i­na­tions for Cold War in the Best Direc­tor and Cin­e­matog­ra­phy races. Direc­tors have found suc­cess by com­ing in to Hol­ly­wood from abroad, as well – take a look at Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, unex­pect­ed Acad­e­my gold­en boy.

The Acad­e­my talked some big talk when they expand­ed their vot­ing body’s mem­ber­ship a few years back after the #OscarsSoWhite deba­cle, claim­ing that bring­ing in fresh blood from across all con­ti­nents would trick­le down into a more unpre­dictable, eclec­tic cer­e­mo­ny. Sur­prise of sur­pris­es, it’s start­ing to look like they may have been right.

The Oscars remain an Amer­i­can func­tion through and through, but they’re com­ing around on the fact that a big piece of the Amer­i­can film indus­try has always been shipped in from far-off-lands.