Behind the veneer of change, the Oscars was just as uninspiring this year as it's always been

At the end of the day, the Academy likes stories about itself (Judy, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood) and costume dramas (Little Women, 1917)

Casting Janelle Monáe as Mr Rogers was a stylish opening move in an Oscars ceremony packed with bold gestures aimed at tackling the Academy’s diverse-averse syndrome. Like BAFTA, which last week despatched a tutting Duke of Cambridge to order the British film industry to pull its collective socks up, the Academy was eager to demonstrate that it’s not nearly as straight, middle-aged, white, or male as its widely heckled nominations had suggested.

By a stroke of fortune, and contrary to the expectations of most, Bong Joon-ho’s stylishly wicked satire Parasite was the night’s big winner, bagging four awards and becoming the first South Korean Oscar winner as well as the first foreign-language feature to win Best Picture. As PR, it could scarcely have been more ideal. Viewers worldwide watched as a South Korean woman (producer Kwak Sin-ae) picked up the biggest prize in Movieland. Others, including Chelsea Ritschel here at the Independent, praised the deft and brilliant Sharon Choi, director Bong’s translator, who probably said more than any other woman onstage, albeit not her own words.

And all this on a night when a self-described “Polynesian Jew” (Taika Waititi, who won Best Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit) paid tribute to the indigenous peoples upon whose land the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood now stands. A night when Eímear Noone became the first woman to conduct an Oscars orchestra. When Joaquin Phoenix invoked “queer rights, indigenous rights, [and] animal rights” in the same (baffling) litany. And when the makers of an animated short (Hair Love) drew global attention to California’s CROWN Act, a landmark anti-racist bill which prohibits discrimination based on hair texture.

Yes: the Force awokens.

But as Bong minesweeps the half-finished cocktails at the Vanity Fair party, it’s important to remember what prompted this hypercorrection.

In many ways, after all, it was #OscarsSoWhite all over again: all four acting winners were successful white performers with previous nominations under their belts. Also #OscarsSoMale – women weren’t not onstage but there weren’t nearly as many speaking as there were men. The Academy failed to recognise any women in the Best Director category – not Greta Gerwig, Joanna Hogg, Lulu Wang, nor Marielle Heller. They could have celebrated more than one person of color in the acting categories, too – selecting any of Lupita Nyong’o, Song Kang-ho, Jennifer Lopez, or Eddie Murphy to stand alongside Cynthia Erivo – but they didn’t.

Perhaps it’s the case that the diversity agenda and the Academy’s preferences just didn’t line up this year. Quality has always arguably been a secondary consideration, and by the same token you could argue that diversity is an incidental rather than intentional casualty here. It’s not as if we don’t know what the Academy favours. It likes stories about itself (Judy; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), and about triumph over adversity, especially when true (Harriet and Bombshell). It loves a good war picture (1917; Jojo Rabbit) and it can’t resist a costume drama (Little Women; all war films). It likes serious epics about men (Once Upon a Time; Joker; The Irishman; The Two Popes; Ford v Ferrari). There wasn’t much space left.

With that in mind, and Parasite notwithstanding (it’s the exception that proves the rule), the Oscars didn’t really contain any surprises.

It’s said that a good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. In this case, the “same thing” would be watching the Oscars and expecting it to deviate from these existing values and interests.

The problem, at its base, is what gets the green light; it’s who gets to make the sort of soggy, conventional prestige fare that the Academy loves. What do this year’s winners mean for the future? It’s hard to see Parasite shifting the dial, in the long term, on Academy tastes; next year’s winner is unlikely to be as innovative or edgy. But perhaps its success at the Oscars and the box office, where it’s already made $165 million globally, will create the conditions for other filmmakers of color, filmmakers from all kinds of backgrounds, to be given the backing to tell the stories they want to tell, be they unusual or entirely conventional, on a big international stage.

Whether this produces more diverse Oscar winners in the years to come is an exam question for a decade hence; if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that nothing gets better overnight.