On Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released their nominations (aka the short short list) for the annual pageant of self-congratulation they call The Academy Awards. Earning recognition from the Academy in the form of an Oscar nomination is but one benchmark of success in an industry full of them. As I was writing that sentence, an advertisement for The Revenant spontaneously came on the television advertising nominations from the Golden Globes. Small movies will tout their film festival accolades (both awards and just being an “Official Selection”). Medium movies will tout reviews from newspapers and websites, or even their Rotten Tomatoes score. Large movies will review their box office (Daddy’s Home touts its status as the #1 Comedy in America). All these measures are primarily methods of film promotion, but, more importantly, they are tools for self-promotion as well; “My movie accomplished X, so finance my next movie.”

Herein lies the importance of Oscar. On the one side, Oscar is a tool of promotion from Hollywood (aka The System or The Man) for their more dramatic features. On the other side, Oscar is a status symbol for filmmakers and studios. A friend recently asked me why the Oscars were so important if they were just a meat parade meant to consume a viewer’s attention while advertising movies they might not actually like. On the one side, that friend is absolutely correct; the Oscars are overrated in their importance and obsessing endlessly over the tastes of a bunch of old white men is endlessly silly.

On the other side, I compared it to an annual work review. Let’s say you’re a good worker, and you’ve had positive interactions with co-workers about your performance. But your boss/supervisor isn’t particularly fond of you, or doesn’t even care about you because he can’t relate to you on a personal level. Every year, that boss refuses to review you in a positive manner, thus denying you a raise year after year. In addition, because of your lack of quality reviews, your work begins drying up and soon you’re demoted to part time. Thus, your ability to survive diminishes with each passing year.

The Academy is made up of self-congratulatory industry professionals, many of whom control the purse strings of the film industry. If they don’t see a movie winning awards or making bank at the box office, they have the potential to tie up that purse and go running off to the next Michael Bay money maker. Over the past 40 years or so, the money makers and the awards winners have been on an increasingly divergent path where a movie has to either earn money or prestige to justify its own existence. In that way, the Academy Awards hint at the tastes of the “taste makers,” and provide hints at the movies we’ll be seeing in the future.

Which brings us back to Thursday, where, in the vast field of nominees, only one minority name came up: Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, the director of The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and a bear. Oh, and some other white guys. And a couple Native Americans, one of whom gets raped by a bunch of white guys. Yeah, that’s the type of minority representation we see at the Academy Awards. Two movies about black people, starring black people, and directed by black people received nominations for the white people involved. Creed, about the son of Apollo Creed, was nominated for Sylvester Stallone’s portrayal of Rocky. Straight Outta Compton, with its black stars, producers and director, about one of the key bands in gangsta rap, was nominated for its screenplay…written by a bunch of white people. Perhaps the most regressive motion was the nomination for Eddie Redmayne’s dire performance as Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl, a movie that brought transgender representation back to the 80s while snubbing either actress from this year’s transgender cult hit Tangerine.

A more positive contrast is what happened at November’s Governor’s Awards. There, the Academy governors, a panel of 51 people, awarded the awards to two white women and a black man: Gena Rowlands, Debbie Reynolds, and Spike Lee. The President of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, acknowledged the diversity problem in the academy itself, addressed the steps they’ve taken, and announced a new initiative, A2020, as an effort to increase diversity in the Academy and encourage diversity in private hiring practices.

One can hope that the lack of diversity in this year’s field of nominees will really spark Isaacs and the Academy into kicking the A2020 into high gear.

In the meantime, I’m going to skip this year’s meat parade. Boycotting as a means of protest actually does accomplish things. In 2008, the Oscars had the lowest viewership since at least the 1970s. As a result, they upped the available nominations for Best Picture to 10. If they get to that point again, something will have to change. I’m gonna do my part to make that happen.