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Are this year’s Oscar nominations disproportionately white and male?

Arts Jan 15, 2015 3:00 PM EDT

On Oscar nomination day, there’s always gossip about who got lauded and who got shafted. But this year felt different to a lot of movie fans. In the hours after the early Hollywood ceremony, movie watchers and film critics took to Twitter to collectively throw up their hands.

#OscarNoms No female directors, screenwriters, or cinematographers. No actors of color. #diversity

— David Daniel (@CNNLADavid) January 15, 2015

Where were the female nominations? Women-centric stories like “Cake” and “Big Eyes” were absent from the acting categories and “Wild” missed out on the adapted screenplay nomination. After last Sunday’s Golden Globes, which had almost every major female honoree comment on the state of women in film, today’s ceremony felt astonishingly lacking.

And where were the artists of color? Critics observed that there hasn’t been a more homogeneous pool of “best” actors and actresses to choose from since 1998 (the year of “Titanic,” “Good Will Hunting,” L.A. Confidential,” and “As Good as It Gets”). And Ava DuVernay was notably absent from the best directing category, where she would have been the first black female to have been honored.

Instead of focusing on where women and artists of color fell short, the conversation turned to the Academy, with many pointing to a 2014 Los Angeles Times article that broke down its voters as:

93 percent white
76 percent male
Average age of 63

As NPR’s Gene Demby pointed out on Twitter, the premiere film organization hardly reflects the group that is more likely than any other ethnic group to attend movies in America: Latinos. Meanwhile, white moviegoers made up less than half of the movie-going audience in 2013.

Thus, #OscarsSoWhite was born. It’s mostly jokes but the common theme is “cluelessness among the academy.”

#OscarsSoWhite One of the reasons I lost interest in contemporary films is that they don't reflect a multicultural America. Not even close

— Marcos Breton (@MarcosBreton) January 15, 2015

So even Legos were not white enough for #Oscar2015. No blacks, Asians nominated. #LegoMovie #OscarsSoWhite http://t.co/nzXNlOpjPd

— Moni Basu (@MbasuCNN) January 15, 2015

It's partly driven by money. Maybe boycotting the Oscars would make the Academy think twice about diversity.#OscarsSoWhite #Selma

— charlotteclymer@mastodon.social (@cmclymer) January 15, 2015

I feel I need to remind some folks: #OscarsSoWhite isn't an attack on white people. It's more commentary on the system that favors white ppl

— _| / |/| | || K❤️ (@KeenePOV) January 15, 2015

One artist seemed to be okay with his snub: Philip Lord, producer and writer of his fan favorite “The Lego Movie.”