Get ready for a mother of an Oscar season

My Favourite Season is a monthly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that runs through the six-month "season" that is both his favourite and Moira Rose's. It explores all things awards in the lead-up to the big one: the Oscars, which are currently scheduled to take place on March 2, 2025.

I have long declared that there are only two seasons: Oscar season, and the rest of the year. And we have just crossed the threshold from the latter to the former, as is done every September when three film festivals (Toronto, Venice and Telluride) usher things in by essentially screening 80 per cent of the movies we'll be talking about for the following five months. 

Personally, I find this beginning stretch of the "season" the most exciting because the possibilities still seem endless and the cynicism is relatively dormant. We're all just excited to see the movies and figure out what we're going to get behind (or root against). And having spent almost every night of September seeing many of the movies, I think I have a pretty good sense of what's going to drive my interest through the season: the potentially legendary motherfest of it all.

Before I translate what I mean by that for anyone that doesn't speak a specific dialect of homosexual, I do feel a need to quickly acknowledge what an unusually exceptional "rest of the year" we just had. In recent years, I've really found the mainstream culture on offer from April to August mostly just not for me. And that was still true of 2024 in many respects, like the wastelands of summer movies (even Twisters sucked, and you all know it) and summer TV (which was basically just The Bear?). Music, however, was a very different story. 

From the moment the Oscars were over in early March, the zeitgeist was taken over by a constant stream of pop stars releasing music that seemed to legitimately shift a segment of our culture somewhere new and exciting. From Charli XCX to Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan to Billie Eilish, the soundtrack to what otherwise felt like darkly conservative times was weirdly super fun and gay and liberating (and brought forth the Brat Summer of it all). It was a thrilling thing to witness, and I was very grateful for it. But while the pop girlies aren't going away this fall (except for Katy Perry, who is very much already gone), they will now need to take a back seat to awards season, at least in my heart. 

It is notable that there is some crossover potential between the two "seasons." No fewer than three pop stars are making a play in the acting Oscar races this year: Selena Gomez for Emilia Pérez, Lady Gaga for Joker: Folie à Deux and Ariana Grande for Wicked. Of the three, Gomez currently seems the most likely to succeed for a film that already won her a shared acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. And while I would be mostly fine with the prospect of us soon saying "Academy Award nominee Selena Gomez" (even if I was not a fan of Emilia Pérez), what's much more exciting to me is a grander narrative at play in terms of so many the actresses — Gaga, Gomez and Grande potentially included — who we'll be watching on talk shows, roundtables, red carpets and awards stages over the next several months. Brat Summer may be over, but I'm not worried, because mother has arrived.

So who exactly is "mother" and what does she have to do with awards season? The easier question might be what doesn't she have to do with awards season, but let me just offer a quick education: "mother" is a slang term derived from the Black and Latino queer ballroom scene of the 1980s and 1990s, where members were organized into "houses" led by a "mother." In large part due to its regular usage on RuPaul's Drag Race, "mother" has more recently been co-opted as a term of endearment for famous (and largely cis and straight) women who have a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to having both an avid following and queer appeal. I should be clear that whether any of the famous women are actual mothers onscreen or off has nothing to do with their status as "mother" (if this U.S. election cycle has been good for anything, it's been making clear that shouldn't matter anyway).   

A 2023 New York Times article used the idea of actress Toni Collette as "mother" as an entry point into their discussion of the term, and not only is she a great example (her "mother" speech in Hereditary really secured her designation), but she's also in the awards conversation this year for her role in Clint Eastwood's upcoming Juror No. 2. Despite being constantly worthy, if Collette ends up making it to the Oscars, it would come some 25 years after her first and only nomination, for 1999's The Sixth Sense. (Not being recognized by mainstream awards bodies often only accelerates one's ascension to mother, just ask Glenn Close, Angela Bassett and Amy Adams).

Awards season has always been a place where mothers thrive, compete and are even born (just look at Sandra Hüller last year, who went from being relatively unknown outside of Europe to the unofficial mother of the entire Oscar season). It is really the metaphoric ballroom of the term's current mainstream use. And this year is looking to be an exceptional example. Beyond Collette, Gaga, Gomez and Grande, there's Adams (Nightbitch), Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore (The Room Next Door), Demi Moore (The Substance), Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez), Angelina Jolie (Maria), Zendaya (Challengers), Joan Chen (Didi), Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Saorise Ronan (The Outrun and Blitz), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths), Jennifer Lopez (Unstoppable), Isabella Rossellini (Conclave), Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Nickel Boys), June Squibb (Thelma), Nicole Kidman (Babygirl) and Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon and Elizabeth Olsen (all for His Three Daughters, which might as well be called My Three Mothers). It's mother-mania, really.

Of course, not everyone I have listed here is necessarily going to be mother to all people. Who is and isn't "mother" is ultimately subjective to the person declaring it (and more often than not, people are a little too loose about who gets the designation). My true mothers of this award season seem likely to be Kidman, Swinton and both of the Moores. All women who's work in movies has, in a sense, helped raise me. And all women whose 2024 films absolutely floored me; Swinton and Julianne Moore bring an extraordinary humanity to their roles in The Room Next Door; Kidman is a bold force of sexuality in Babygirl; And Demi Moore gives a brilliantly psychotic performance — arguably the best of her entire career — in The Substance. 

Will all four of these women end up getting Oscar nominations this year? Probably not, though that's not really the point. The key to actually enjoying awards season is not taking it too seriously, and never expecting what you want to happen to actually happen. What awards season actually is for those of us watching from afar is… a silly distraction. And having all these "mothers" — whether mine or yours — as an alternative focal point during a season that will unfold during an absolutely brutal U.S election cycle will surely prove especially useful. When the noise of the relentless real world gets too loud over the next few months, turn it off as best you can and just take a ride on the mothership.

Check out our predictions for this year's Academy Awards, which will add categories as the season goes on.