
Academy establishes inclusion standards for Oscars eligibility - g42gregory
https://www.oscars.org/news/academy-establishes-representation-and-inclusion-standards-oscarsr-eligibility
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f1refly
Absolutely ridiculous. It's like we're taking a step back from the
progressive, colour blind world we once strived for every day. How this
blatantly sexist and racist piece of writing can be published without fatal
backlash from every thinking person is beyond me.

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Magodo
Can you really blame the academy though? They've been hammered pretty much non
stop by comedians and popular media that they're not inclusive enough with
absolutely no one defending them probably in fear of getting canceled. And
once this happens, everybody throws their hands up and says no that's not
really what we wanted. The real issue here is that everybody's got a mouth
these days...

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deathgrips
>Can you really blame the academy though?

Yes... Don't give in to people who want to cheapen awards for political
points. Let talented diverse crews win on the merits of their art.

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qtplatypus
The awards where always about political points. It’s just a way for the MPAA
to look legitimate. Further more it has never been about the merits of their
art. Otherwise Boss Baby would never have got a nomination.

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kace91
For supposedly international awards, this is ridiculously American. I wonder
what happens with foreign movies. Is parasites passing the threshold for
having Asian actors, despite Asians obviously not being a minority in korea?

Also, what about introversive movies with a extremely small cast? (The usual
Oscar bait of "character gets stuck in a mountain/island/wherever"). Does 30%
of your single actor have to be a minority?

It sounds super ridiculous that you have to wonder about this kind of
questions, like it will inevitably lead to worsen the tokenization of
characters that Hollywood is already infamous for, and harmful for indie
companies.

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deathgrips
It's not diverse. That word is code for "fewer white and Asian people". The
same people who profess diversity think that Black Panther and Moonlight had
diverse casts.

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rcarmo
As an European, I find this _extremely_ weird, and almost as biased as what it
purports to counteract.

What if ($DIVINITY forbid) someone decides to do a movie about N.Y.
stockbrokers in the 80s, or about the sole survivor of an
expedition/starship/civilization? Do animals/aliens/octopi count as “diverse”
cast members?

I haven’t had coffee yet so I’m thinking off the cuff, but of all the recent
movies I’ve watched/intend to see, only Mulan (which I haven’t watched) would
qualify on the first three counts.

Also, I can see a lot of writers and movie directors going “I want to tell my
story in my own way and not tick someone else’s arbitrary boxes”. Creativity
is like that.

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deathgrips
The facts are in--white people can't make good movies on their own. It was a
good run, but they couldn't keep up the charade forever. /s

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bmarquez
I find this document strange because it calls Hispanics "Latinx" which is not
commonly used except in activist contexts. Latino/latina would make a lot more
sense.

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qtplatypus
Hispanics and Latino/Latina are not the same. There are people who live in
Latin America who don’t speak Spanish and people who speak Spanish who are not
in Latin America.

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bioinformatics
Are you some kind of genius? This opened my mind in so many ways.

¡Muchas gracias por escribrir!

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notRobot
Shouldn't they be judging the actual art, acting, directing, etc., and
completely disregard the genders, ethnicity, and race of the actors? Wouldn't
that be the best for such an award?

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deathgrips
It's an unspoken foundation of far leftist thought that people don't have
beliefs, they have influences. Any art you make is merely an expression of
your race, sex, sexual orientation, et cetera. For decades academics have been
saying that all white people are subconsciously, inescapably racist. This is
the result of that foundational belief.

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qtplatypus
Well that is something that is very strawman like. However you don’t;t need
“far leftist thought” to examine this. The academy are well known to have
tastes and favour some types of movies over others.

The oscars has consistently ignored SF/F, favoured films about history. To the
point that some movie makers directly pander to the academy’s tastes in an
attempt to get a Oscar nom.

The academy knows that there taste is out of touch with the American people
because the movies that gets Oscar noms are less and less like the movies that
American people like. This is a part of their attempt to fix this.

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deathgrips
It's not a strawman since it is exactly that which is stated by many
influential leftist writers.

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mercer
Could you give some names?

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deathgrips
It's basically the idea of dialectical materialism. The very popular book
White Fragility is a great example of this thought process.

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qtplatypus
Good so it will be simple for you to find a quote that supports this from the
book.

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starhopper
Wow, actual racism being passed off as something pro-equality. Welcome to
1984.

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mjburgess
Standards C & D seem easy to meet by almost all films: hire some minority
interns & marketing people.

I suspect the extreme criteria associated with A&B are mostly for PR purposes,
and they expect just some lip-service to be paid via a few "opportunities" far
behind the scenes.

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LatteLazy
I don't support this type of behavior but... it does seem like this is
designed to look very aggressive but actually not be.

You are half way to being accepted at least two of these roles are held by
women/LGBTQ/racial minorities:

Casting Director, Cinematographer, Composer, Costume Designer, Director,
Editor, Hairstylist, Makeup Artist, Producer, Production Designer, Set
Decorator, Sound, VFX Supervisor, Writer

There are other ways to get very easy points in.

They list the BFI as the model for this and we brits are great at this sort of
"looks tough but you met the criteria twice over without changing anything"
systems.

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justchilly
This will put a lot of smaller/indie movies out of contention. Particularly
from non-minority foreign countries. Meanwhile, recent best picture winners
were rather homogeneous: Parasite Won in 2019. Moonlight in 2017.

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Khelavaster
So, all you need to do to get a film qualified is offer internships to
underrepresented group and do market research/test audiences on
underrepresented groups.

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oldwhiteman
I support this. Eventually it is a classification algorithm and will label
boring movies with high accuracy. Saves me time.

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emerged
You can already accomplish this by looking at the difference between critic
reviews and audience reviews on rotten tomatoes.

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oldwhiteman
Fair enough.

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dmarchand90
Regardless of whether you support this policy or not, the standards are
actually very easy to hit. You only need 2/4 categories. Categories 1
(restrictions on actors) and 2 (directing, creative) are probably what
everyone is thinking right now. But category 3 is basically hire some interns,
and category 4 is about who works in marketing.

Seems like this policy will freak out conservatives while being effectively
toothless for progressives.

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AmericanChopper
Ironically, this years best picture winner would still be eligible. With every
single member of its cast, and very nearly every single member of its crew
belonging to the same ethnic group.

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vertbhrtn
As funny as it sounds, we're watching the formation of "progressive
fundamentalists" \- their "inclusion committee" would give people a low social
score if their skin isn't black enough, or their gender is too male or sexual
orientation is too straight. And inquisition, of course, would be watching for
heretics and send them to "inclusion re-education camps".

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vertbhrtn
You know what? I have a clever idea: the Diversity Standard 500 index, or just
DS500. We have this SP500 index: a weighted sum of 500 companies into which
everyone invests piles of money. The weights are carefully set by the index
committee, which gives them outrageous power over the money flow. DS500 shares
the same idea: a highly diverse committee would choose a weighted list of
desirable traits, and the gov would use these weights to apply the tax code.
From time to time the weights would be revisited to reflect the new trends.

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rich_sasha
I normally get this kind of things... but I actually applaud them this time!

One, there is a lot to be said about having written criteria. You can agree or
disagree, critique or boycott, but you can’t really do either of those with a
woke cancel culture of unwritten rules of correctness.

Two, it is true, how many films show disabled people as part of normal life?
Films do present a distorted view of the world. That’s partly why we watch
them - we can watch the world as it is for free - but to encourage it to show
marginalised groups as part of “normal background” is definitely good. I
wonder how I would feel if I were wheelchair bound, say, and all I could see
were films where no one like me existed. What, for aesthetic reasons?

And finally, films are generally aspirational (maybe except catastrophe and
horror genres). They raise the bar of what we expect financially, socially,
romantically etc. Especially so for Hollywood blockbusters. So why shouldn’t
they be aspirational in social progress too?

I’m sure sometimes it just won’t be possible. A film about Nazis will
definitely show a bunch of white men. But that’s not a typical Hollywood
blockbuster.

If we can’t put successful Black lawyers, female leaders, disabled heroes on a
fake screen of film, what are our odds with the real life?

