Last night's Best Picture award winner, "Green Book," sparked controversy on social media because of its "white savior" message. For years in film, white characters have been portrayed as being the only ones who could protect and lead black people from the conflicts they encounter.
"Green Book" is about an Italian-American man who was hired by Dr. Don Shirley, a black jazz musician in the '60s, to drive him through the south for his tour. Despite complaints from the deceased Shirley's family about the inaccuracy of the film, the director and producer, who was the son of Shirley's driver, said backstage at the Oscars that he didn't know Shirley's family existed until he finished the film.
Much of the backlash reflects Hollywood's lack of diversity. Black people make up just six percent of directors, and three percent are of Asian descent, according to a study by Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative examining diversity across 1,200 films from 2007 to 2018.
Miki Turner, former film critic and Annenberg professor, said that inaccuracies in Shirley's story in "Green Book" are not surprising because his family has little say in the film.
"I'm not a proponent of people looking for film to inform their consciousness. It's great when it does, but at the end of the day, it's still someone's interpretation of the facts, and their perception of events," Turner said. "As a realist, I just don't put a whole lot of stock in that."
Justin Chang, an L.A. Times film critic, called "Green Book" "the worst best picture Oscar winner since 'Crash,'" a 2004 film with similar themes of racial discrimination.
Chang says "Crash" minimizes the prejudices of white people by showing that people of all races have biases, and critics say "Green Book" sends the same message that racial differences can be overlooked through open conversation.
However, Turner believes that "Crash" was a precursor to our current political state while "Green Book" is a narrative about the past.
"'Green Book' was much more subtle [than "Crash"] because for one, it's a period film so you expected characters to be confronted with that kind of racism," Turner said.
"In 'Crash,' this was a time when we were all on an equal playing field. That was basically an announcement that we haven't moved that far because that was still around."
In 2015, activist April Reign created the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. She started the movement to draw attention to institutional biases in the Academy.
"It's not because there's a lack of quality films that star or feature people of color; that's not the issue," Reign told MTV News. "There was an article in The Atlantic recently which indicated who the Oscar voters are. They are 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and the average age is 63 years old … and they might not be as interested in seeing 'Selma.'"
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have since increased membership in an effort to double the number of women and diverse members by 2020.
Director Spike Lee, who won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for his film "BlacKkKlansman," told The Hollywood Reporter that #OscarsSoWhite is the reason that black movies have been able to garner critical acclaim recently.
Lee told The Hollywood Reporter that Reign and Cheryl Boone Isaacs, former academy president, "are the reason why we got nominations … they are responsible for all these black folks getting nominations."
Conversely, Turner believes that the underlying issue has more to do with connections in Hollywood.
"It's not really about diversity, it's about nepotism because people tend to hire their friends, their cousins, people they know on all sides of the color line," she said. "They work with their group of people, and it makes it harder for other people to get in."
Maya Tribbett, Tiffany Wong, and Dakota Gryffin contributed to this article.