The 'Selma' Oscar Snubs: What It Means About Race And Gender In Hollywood

Crack your knuckles, take a deep breath and get ready to look for a way to be outraged —we’re going to talk about race and gender. In light of the perceived "snubbing" (a problematic concept in the first place, tending to veer toward "a pointed exclusion due to malevolent forces" and away from simply "not chosen from a wide pool of worthy candidates") of Ava DuVernay’ "Selma" in certain major Oscar categories, a warning flare was shot up into the dawn sky over the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in LA last Thursday. That flare then exploded into a firestorm with the realization that all 20 acting nominees are white, and across all feature film nomination categories (including Documentary, Foreign and Animated as well as the main Best Director category), there are just two female directors on the slate, both for documentaries —Laura Poitras for "Citizenfour" and Rory Kennedy, co-director of "Last Days in...