Academy establishes inclusion standards for Oscars eligibility

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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?