Concerns have also been raised about the treatment of disability in mainstream awards culture.
These voices have grown louder since Eddie Redmayne took the Bafta best actor prize for his performance as Stephen Hawking with motor neurone disease in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne is now considered one of the likely winners of the best acting Oscar.
The issue here is not only about which identity groups (women, ethnic/racial minorities) are represented on screen. It is also about who they are represented by - and this is an issue crucially linked to questions of employment in the film industry, in front and behind the camera.
In an equally predictable manner, these often well-argued critiques are frequently dismissed - mostly by assertions that the list of nominees was not the result of white, male, able-bodied bias but simply an acknowledgement of the "best" films, directors and actors.
This ignores the deep-rooted structural inequalities within the film industry, not to mention the wider socio-cultural and political context.
I'm certainly not suggesting this year's Oscar contenders are not good films, directors and actors, or that they don't deserve recognition. I also don't think critics should dismiss the Oscars and what they stand for on the basis of their obnoxiously normative predictability. Resignation or dismissal are too easy a way out.
The Oscars have a long history of marginalising women, racial and ethnic minorities and people with disability.
As recently as 2002, Halle Berry became the first, and the only, woman of colour to win a best actress Oscar in the 85-year history of the Academy Awards. Men of colour have fared marginally better, receiving 9 per cent of best actor Oscars.
No black director, male or female, has won a best directing Oscar. No woman of colour has been among the nominees.
The Oscars also have an astounding history of rewarding able-bodied actors for "cripping up" to play disabled roles. If Redmayne wins a best actor Oscar next week, he will join an illustrious list of able-bodied actors (all white and male) rewarded for their "outstanding" performances of disability, including Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man, 1988), Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot, 1989) and Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, 1994).
The white, male norm at the Oscars, and in Hollywood cinema more generally, has deep-seated cultural, political and economic roots. Unfortunately, this norm appears to be in the process of becoming more, rather than less, securely established. But the lack of diversity of this year's Academy Award nominations seems to have struck a particular chord.
This might be because the film industry has come under increased pressure to sort out its structural inequalities and racist and sexist hierarchies.
These were spectacularly exposed when a significant gender pay gap was revealed through emails leaked in the Sony Pictures hack.
It might also be because we have seen that things can be done differently. The overwhelmingly positive reactions to the TV series Transparent, for instance, are largely ascribed to the involvement of transgender people not only on screen, but in the production process.
Similar arguments about the importance of diversity in the production process have been made about the civil rights drama Selma.
Obviously, this is not to say that only black or trans people can, or should, create representations of black or trans identities. But what it does suggest is that a greater variety of perspectives tends to lead to more diverse, "authentic" depictions that speak to a wider range of audiences and experiences.
* Katharina Lindner is lecturer in film and media at the University of Stirling in Scotland
