Spike Lee credits #OscarsSoWhite campaign for BlacKkKlansman securing Oscars nominations

The nominations for the 91st Academy Awards were announced on 23 January and Spike Lee’s crime comedy-drama BlacKkKLansman earned six Oscar nods, including best picture and best director. Director Spike Lee, however, credits the #OscarsSoWhite campaign for the recognition that his film received.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lee said that the #OscarsSoWhite movement was responsible for making the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences realise that they had to diversify their membership. Referencing Moonlight, the coming-of-age film that won the Best Picture Award at Oscars 2017, he said it is the diversity in the voting members that makes a difference.

Lee had helmed the landmark racial drama Do the Right Thing in 1989 which only got Academy Award nominations for best original screenplay and best supporting actor. Despite often being listed among the greatest films of all time, the movie and Lee were snubbed at the Oscars. In the wake of Lee’s historic nomination, a clip, featuring Kim Basinger, calling out the Academy for snubbing the film, surfaced online.

As Spike Lee celebrates his first Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Picture, I'm reminded of the 1989 Oscars, when presenter Kim Basinger went off-book to blast the Academy for snubbing Spike's DO THE RIGHT THING pic.twitter.com/JXEMwhaBdd

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) January 22, 2019

“So if you want to go back to 1989, that membership was not feeling Do the Right Thing, they weren’t feeling that. But, look, we’re here today, it’s not 1989, and the world knows where Do the Right Thing is in the place of American history, world history, cinema history, so that’s a given,” Lee was quoted by the magazine. Lee had made headlines when he decided to boycott  2016 Oscars over the Academy’s failure to nominate a single non-white actor for the second consecutive year.