Academy establishes inclusion standards for Oscars eligibility(oscars.org)
oscars.org
Academy establishes inclusion standards for Oscars eligibility
https://www.oscars.org/news/academy-establishes-representation-and-inclusion-standards-oscarsr-eligibility
47 comments
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.
konjin(1)
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...
>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.
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.
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.
Because we haven’t gotten to being a colour blind world yet.
The Oscars have a long history of being biased towards white people. What is worse since winning a Oscar allows you to vote on the Oscars that bias has been perpetrated.
The Oscars have a long history of being biased towards white people. What is worse since winning a Oscar allows you to vote on the Oscars that bias has been perpetrated.
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.
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.
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.
As an European, I find this _extremely_ weird, and almost as biased as what it purports to counteract.
What if ($DIVINITY forbid) someone decides to do a movie about N.Y. stockbrokers in the 80s, or about the sole survivor of an expedition/starship/civilization? Do animals/aliens/octopi count as “diverse” cast members?
I haven’t had coffee yet so I’m thinking off the cuff, but of all the recent movies I’ve watched/intend to see, only Mulan (which I haven’t watched) would qualify on the first three counts.
Also, I can see a lot of writers and movie directors going “I want to tell my story in my own way and not tick someone else’s arbitrary boxes”. Creativity is like that.
What if ($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.
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
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.
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.
Are you some kind of genius? This opened my mind in so many ways.
¡Muchas gracias por escribrir!
¡Muchas gracias por escribrir!
“Latinx” is particularly common recently, outside of activist contexts. I find it annoying, since its, at best, a linguistically-ignorant gender neutralization of Latino/Latina, and Latino (as both masculine and gender inclusive) and Latina (as feminine) themselves were adopted because they respected the language of the cultures being identified better than the existing English term (Latin), which was already gender neutral.
Latinx neither does that nor is phonetically sensible in English (if you don't know it's origin, it looks like it should be pronounced “la-TINKS”), and further isn't just gender neutral but actively gender-hostile (literally X-ing out part of the identity of the people labelled with it.)
Latinx neither does that nor is phonetically sensible in English (if you don't know it's origin, it looks like it should be pronounced “la-TINKS”), and further isn't just gender neutral but actively gender-hostile (literally X-ing out part of the identity of the people labelled with it.)
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?
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.
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.
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.
It's not a strawman since it is exactly that which is stated by many influential leftist writers.
Could you give some names?
It's basically the idea of dialectical materialism. The very popular book White Fragility is a great example of this thought process.
Good so it will be simple for you to find a quote that supports this from the book.
The counter argument is that the Academy reports to no one but themselves and can set whatever standard they want for their own award show.
They should be but if you look at the history they haven’t been. This is an effort to correct for this.
There was a precedent: blind auditions in orchestra. Results were rather predictable.
Predictable in what way? Last year there was some discussion about the correctness of the usual take-away of the original blind-audition study: https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/
Indeed, and now the Association of American Orchestras wants to end blind auditions because they don't get enough black people that way ️
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...
https://americanorchestras.org/images/stories/diversity/Raci...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...
https://americanorchestras.org/images/stories/diversity/Raci...
Wow, actual racism being passed off as something pro-equality. Welcome to 1984.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I support this. Eventually it is a classification algorithm and will label boring movies with high accuracy. Saves me time.
You can already accomplish this by looking at the difference between critic reviews and audience reviews on rotten tomatoes.
Fair enough.
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.
Seems like this policy will freak out conservatives while being effectively toothless for progressives.
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.
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".
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.
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?
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?