The Oscars snubbed 'The Florida Project' because we don't like stories of women in poverty (2024)

And the award for the best social-issue movie of the year goes to ... a story about a woman who falls in love with a fish.

An oppressed fish. An impoverished fish. But ya know. A fish.

That's the message many who care about this sh*t felt like they heard after the 2018 Oscar nominees were announced on Tuesday. Guillermo's del Toro's The Shape of Water, an interspecies romance, earned an impressive 13 nominations, while The Florida Project, a story about a single mother in poverty and her puckish young daughter, garnered just one. It was a Best Supporting Actor nom for Willem Dafoe, an already well recognized dude.

There's plenty of non-depressing reasons behind the snub (The Florida Project feels like a traditional unwinnable art house indie, for one) -- as well as one that shouldn't be ignored: Oscar voters don't historically like to look at women who are poor, especially when they're asked to stare at their poverty straight on.

The Florida Project is set in some of America's most stigmatized real estate: a neon purple welfare motel in Kissimmee, Florida, right outside of Orlando. Its subjects include a young mother, Halley (Bria Vinaitte), her six-year-old daughter, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), as well as Bobby Hicks (Willem Dafoe) the building's hardworking manager who has a soft spot for Moonee's small troubled family.

Narratives about poverty do, of course, make it to the awards stage on occasion (Precious, The Blind Side), but they're different. Unlike other films in its genre, The Florida Project manages to be driven by empathy without ever lapsing into sentimentality or romanticization.

There aren't any rescuers in The Florida Project like there are in The Blind Side -- just kind people who try and frequently fail. There aren't many men. Halley is both a victim of "the system" and an active participant in it. Moonee is a spectacularly charismatic young rascal, as well as a destructively obnoxious one. Their lives are shaped by joy and by trauma; everyone is to blame for their plight, and no one is.

Via Giphy

And unlike any of these films, there's nothing firm that viewers can hold onto at the conclusion of The Florida Project to give them hope. No shiny adoptive family is coming to liberate Monee. At the age of six, she's not about to enter a satisfying romantic relationship like in Moonlight. All director Sean Baker leaves us with is Monee's pint-sized resilient spirit, which is simultaneously real and absolutely soul-crushing.

Via Giphy

That can be hard for any American to digest, forget an Academy voter. If you're a person with any hint of privilege, it should give you guilt. Women make up a disproportionate share of people in poverty, with 13.1 percent of all women living under or at the poverty line, compared to just 11.1 percent for men.

And the film's specific pain just might be too removed from the lived experiences of the Academy pool. In 2017, just 28 percent of Academy voters were women, and only 13 percent were people of color. While I can't speak for the entire Academy class, it's safe to assume that the majority of Academy voters likely didn't grow up in Florida's welfare hotels and can't identify with Moonee's particular trauma.

In the Academy's defense, they probably haven't lost their daughter and put up three billboards about her death in the middle of Missouri, either. But for a brutal film, Three Billboards offers so much more hope to viewers than The Florida Project. Racists are redeemable in Ebbing, Missouri. Hardworking heroic cops exist. Domestic abusers can make good parents. And sometimes they're even funny!

The fictional Ebbing, Missouri, feels so hyperbolic and so distant from how a real Missouri small town might behave, it's downright soothing. Sean Baker's Kissimmee, on the other hand, is hot, sweaty, and grounded by social realism. There isn't enough humor to protect us from the story's trauma. The Florida Project doesn't have the magic of dissociation other films in its category typically do.

To be clear, I can't identify with any of The Florida Project's particularly traumas myself. As a social worker who worked in foster care, however, I can speak to the realism of some the film's "helper" characters. I know what it's like to be Willem Dafoe and the movie's social workers, wanting to help but with none of the right tools. As a viewer, you undergo an almost parallel experience, sitting motionless as a group of people you've come to love breaks down before your eyes.

Social-issue dramas that have familiar traumas -- or romantic, guilt-free endings -- tend to perform better than stories like The Florida Project. It shouldn't surprise us that Three Billboards, the story of a white racist cop who becomes a feminist hero after getting a stern talking-to, racked up seven nominations.

The movie shares the same fantasy that every WaPo and New York Times "Trump voters in a diner piece" of the past year contains. Every character is a part of a "working family," no one is poor. In all of these pieces, racism is a kind of virus, one that's easily cured with a trenchant monologue and always by the end of the story.

What a lovely little lie.

There are movies that buck the Academy's trend -- Get Out racked up three nominations in 2018, Moonlight brought home Best Picture in 2017 -- but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Their success is entirely novel, and is often met with quiet pushback.

Before you comment, I know, I get it. There are reasons why The Florida Project may have been snubbed that have nothing to do with our cultural biases. It was a small budget film that never enjoyed commercial success of its competitors, grossing just $5.6 million domestically. The Florida Project didn't involve a world war, which is always foolproof Oscar material, or any major names outside of Dafoe.

It's to be expected. And still worth our outrage.

Imagine how many people would have seen The Florida Project if it had gotten a Best Picture nom. Imagine how many more viewers would be tasked to feel for Halley's family and the real-life mothers and daughters they represent. Who knows what kind of change it could inspire?

Viewers can't save Moonee from her ending, but the least they can do is listen to her story.

'The Florida Project' is currently in selected theaters, and will be available on Amazon Video and iTunes on January 30th.