Movies - TV
Sarah Polley's Oscar Win For Women Talking Bucks A Sad Oscars Trend
By VALERIE ETTENHOFER
After Sarah Polley won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for “Women Talking” at the 95th Academy Awards, she used her speech to address an issue. Before talking about the democratic womanhood themes in Miriam Toews’ novel, she said, “I want to thank the Academy for not being mortally offended by the words’ women’ and ‘talking’ put so close together like that!”
While this could refer to multiple areas that the Oscars need to improve on in regards to supporting women, it gets to the truth of Polley’s category — she is only the 10th woman to receive the trophy in over 90 years. Women winners in the Best Adapted Screenplay category have been sporadic since Frances Marion first received the award in 1931, with a 40-plus-year gap starting in 1943.
There have been 124 Oscar winners in the category now known as Best Adapted Screenplay, meaning that only 8% have been women — two of which have been in the last decade. Polley spoke about women’s future in the industry, adding, “The last line of our film is delivered by a young woman to a new baby, and she says, ‘Your story will be different from ours.’ It’s a promise, a commitment, and an anchor.”