Moonlight is the first movie with an LGBTQ protagonist to win Best Picture. The modestly-budgeted indie is also the only film with a predominantly black cast to win top honors at the Academy Awards, but you've likely heard little about those milestones in the week since Sunday's ceremony. To recap the controversy that has overshadowed its historic win is perhaps unnecessary at this point, but alas: Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, handed the wrong envelope, read La La Land's name by mistake. Jordan Horowitz, one of the producers of the LA-set musical, was forced to clear up the snafu just as he was accepting the biggest award in his industry.

Instead of highlighting Moonlight's groundbreaking achievement, pundits have attempted to dissect the anatomy of the controversy in the days since. How could the Academy have messed up the big reveal so badly? And more to the point, how did all of us filling out our ballots at home get it so wrong? La La Land was heavily favored to sweep the ceremony, seemingly the biggest Oscar juggernaut since The Artist sailed through awards season untouched in 2012.

"To suggest [Moonlight's] victory was motivated by affirmative action or the current administration ignores that the film took home three Oscars for the same reason every other movie wins awards—it earned them."

If the presumed frontrunner was dethroned from its gilded perch on Sunday, theories have abounded to why. Vox's Todd VanDerWerff argued its win was an anti-Trump protest. Vulture's Kyle Buchanan suggested the optics of handing a bunch of trophies to a retro musical were less than desirable under an administration whose ethos, "Make America Great Again," relies on nostalgia for the same era that inspired La La Land. Fox News's Tariq Khan pointed to the Oscars' preferential ballot system, which favors consensus picks over more contentious winners, and La La Land has proven surprisingly divisive for a cotton candy-colored throwback.

Republican talking heads Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh even blamed the upset on political correctness. On Monday's episode of Fox & Friends, Carlson said Moonlight's win was a foregone conclusion for an industry that wants "not just to entertain, but to instruct." In extremely on-brand fashion, Limbaugh referred to the indie as a "twofer" about a "gay black guy" on his radio show.

Jordan Horowitz announces Getty Images

Some of these explanations are more compelling than others, but the only reason for its Best Picture win that matters has been the one least discussed: Moonlight truly was the best picture of the year. To suggest its victory was motivated by affirmative action or a middle finger to the current administration ignores that the film took home three Oscars—also for Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay—for the same reason every other movie wins awards: it earned them.

This narrative reflects the ways in which #OscarsSoWhite has been mischaracterized. The ongoing hashtag campaign has pushed the Academy Awards to recognize artists of color after two consecutive years where the acting nominees were all white. That conversation, though, isn't just about the people who are celebrated by Oscar voters, but who the Academy leaves out altogether in the process.

In 2015, Selma director Ava Duvernay was snubbed for Best Director, despite enormous critical praise for her film. Even though Selma earned a sole Best Picture nomination, its star—David Oyelowo—was not recognized for his stunning portrayal of Martin Luther King. Duvernay and Oyelowo earned bids at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, but the Academy instead favored the less-acclaimed American Sniper, which was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Lead Actor in its place. Directed by Clint Eastwood, that film valorizes a man who bragged about killing Muslims.

The following year, the Oscars passed over Michael B. Jordan, brutally effective as an upstart boxer in Ryan Coogler's surprisingly dazzling Creed, and Idris Elba, an early frontrunner for Netflix's Beasts of No Nation. Elba earned a mention at the Golden Globes for his chilling performance as a charismatic warlord and won the Screen Actors Guild trophy for Best Supporting Actor. He was left out come Oscar nomination time. Jordan was not nominated, but his white co-star, Sylvester Stallone, was. He almost won.

To demand recognition for these performances is not intended to fill a quota on the Oscar ballot (e.g., that 10-20 percent of nominees must be people of color) but about awarding their merit. For years, the Academy Awards has snubbed black artists who have distinguished themselves as some of the most important and transformative storytellers in their field, as well as ignoring films that deal honestly with the struggles faced by people of color in American society.

Trevante Rhodes as Black in A24

Hoop Dreams, which critic Roger Ebert believed to be the best movie of the 1990s, is one of the greatest documentaries ever made. In Steve James's film, the NBA is not merely a pastime—it's a lifeline for black youth in impoverished neighborhoods, many of whom would have no other chance to break the cycle of poverty if not for pro basketball. Do the Right Thing, the most acclaimed and controversial movie of 1989, was one of the few times At the Movies hosts Ebert and Gene Siskel ever agreed on the best movie of the year. Neither film was nominated. The Academy preferred Driving Miss Daisy, in which a racist white lady learns the value of being friends with black people, over Spike Lee's button-pushing masterwork. Lee has never been shortlisted for Best Director.

This history of erasure has loomed large over the Oscars in recent years, and the Academy has attempted to rectify its racial exclusion. In 2016, AMPAS president Cheryl Boone Isaacs invited 683 new industry leaders to be voting members of the Academy, and 41 percent of invitees were people of color. That sea change clearly reverberated on Sunday, when Moonlight rewrote the rules of what a Best Picture winner looks like.

"Jenkins's work is tender and humane, bringing us so close to his subject that it feels as if the audience could caress the young boy to ease his pain."

But Moonlight deserved that award for the same reason that Oscar snubees like Malcolm X, Eve's Bayou, Dear White People and Pariah merited the same recognition bestowed on movies about white characters: they told important, gripping stories that deserved to be heard. The fact that Moonlight even exists is a miracle, let alone the fact that it's as good as it is. After directing 2008's Medicine for Melancholy, it took director Barry Jenkins nearly a decade to get financing off the ground to make a small, personal picture about a young boy struggling with his queer identity on the streets of Miami.

Moonlight is a landmark achievement in nearly every sense—a triumph in directing, acting and cinematography. A tracking shot of Chiron (Ashton Sanders), who is being bullied in school by a teenage tyrant, storming through the halls to enact his revenge is one of the most indelible images ever printed on film, a tone poem of seething rage bubbling to the surface. Jenkins's work is tender and humane, bringing us so close to his subject that it feels as if the audience could caress the young boy to ease his pain.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Critics responded with universal praise. Moonlight earned a near perfect score on Metacritic and landed on more Top 10 lists than any other film last year. More than 162 reviewers called Moonlight the year's greatest film, while La La Land topped just 99 critics' lists. What more does a movie have to do to prove that it deserves the honor of being named Best Picture?

The Moonlight post-mortem shows just how far we have to go, however, in not only recognizing black excellence but honoring that recognition. When Spotlight took home Best Picture last year, the narrative was about its worthiness—the hard work that director Tom McCarthy put into telling a meticulously fact-based account of the Catholic sex abuse scandals. Spotlight is a superb movie. For a voting body that too often recognizes crowd-pleasing pap over artistry (see: A Beautiful Mind), its win was rightly celebrated as a victory of substance over style. It's just too bad that films about black people don't yet have the privilege of sharing that narrative.

Nico Lang Nico Lang is an essayist, critic, and national LGBT reporter.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io