Emerson College Film Student to Carry Trophies at 2013 Oscars

Hearin Ko, a sophomore from Seoul, Korea, is one of six film students who will replace model presenters at the awards show.


Hearin Ko’s video essay shares her goal of carving out magic realism as an official new film genre.

Tonight, instead of seeing tall, slim, busty blondes carry Oscars down the stage, the golden statues will instead be carried by six film students, one of whom is from Boston’s Emerson College.

A sophomore studying visual and media arts, 19-year-old Hearin Ko from Seoul, South Korea, beat out more than 1,000 other students in a film essay contest to win a spot on the Oscar stage.

The shift from using models to film students as trophy carriers is a refreshing and overdue change to the Academy Awards.

Neil Meron, co-producer of tonight’s show, told the Associated Press:

This tradition of the buxom babe that comes out and brings the trophy to the presenter to give to the winner seemed to be very antiquated and kind of sexist, too. … They’re just there to be objectified. Why can’t we have people who actually care about film and are the future of film be the trophy presenters?”

Ko is one of those aspiring filmmakers. She told Emerson that Hollywood was always a faraway dream, and “to finally be here and see everything, it brings the dream closer to me. This can really happen if I try hard. It’s not as far as I thought it was.”