New Oscars standards say best picture contenders must be inclusive to compete

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm sure the conservative media and blue avatars will completely misrepresent this move as "movies have to have black people or they can't be nominated for an Oscar."

In reality, this is about not having your makeup, costume, marketing and design teams be 100% old white men.  Which is good for the industry since that's where like 90% of the actual industry jobs are.

[Figueira]

I'm sure the conservative media and blue avatars will completely misrepresent this move as "movies have to have black people or they can't be nominated for an Oscar."

In reality, this is about not having your makeup, costume, marketing and design teams be 100% old white men.  Which is good for the industry since that's where like 90% of the actual industry jobs are.

The Atlas thread would have more of this too if the OP didn't start the thread by making it explicit what the new rule is actually saying. Thank you, tack50.

[GP270watch]

The Hollywood studio system basically guaranteed whiteness for decades, the proposed guidelines now are not only fair but not even a big deal.


It's too bad there was really no other studio system alternative that succeeded:

 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To actually approve of this, to genuinely think it a good idea, one's notion of the object of cinema must be fundamentally dreary. It would be necessary to believe, to really believe, that it is best understood as production, not as art. That the great tension that defines cinema - is it culture or is it industry? Is it art or is it commerce? - is in fact non-existent, with the matter decided in hands-down in favour of the bean counters. Needless to say, this is exactly how the powers that be in Hollywood do view cinema (and always have viewed cinema), but that does not mean that they are right.

[Brittain33]

To actually approve of this, to genuinely think it a good idea, one's notion of the object of cinema must be fundamentally dreary. It would be necessary to believe, to really believe, that it is best understood as production, not as art. That the great tension that defines cinema - is it culture or is it industry? Is it art or is it commerce? - is in fact non-existent, with the matter decided in hands-down in favour of the bean counters. Needless to say, this is exactly how the powers that be in Hollywood do view cinema (and always have viewed cinema), but that does not mean that they are right.

Whatever one thinks about the cinema as a whole, I don't think there's any debate to be had that the Oscar for Best Picture can not be free of "dreary" concerns about profit and investment and production and workers. So has it always been. There are other forms of recognition and other awards for the little movies that could. 

[Brittain33]

Suggested new title for this thread

I'm sorry that it's so hard for you to talk about race but it's important that we have these conversations.

I'm sorry, is that "I know you are, but what am I?" 🤔

[Brittain33]

Literally three of the first six comments were “This is a mistake”, “it’s all for show”, and “<giant roll eyes>,” which I don’t find to be serious comments about a complicated solution to a complicated situation. Other people are making absurd arguments about Parasite. But if you want to call me out for ruining the thread because I used a picture instead of words to push back, that’s your option.

Moderators here can make the judgment if I’m trolling or using excessive hyperbole. I’m not going to contest anything they do.

[Rep Jessica]

This means no more european based movies. Sad

[The Mikado]

Doesn't this mean, almost by definition, that last year's Oscar winner, Parasite, which had a completely Korean cast, would never be able to win again? Not a lot of diversity in a cast that's all from the same ethnic background.

Literally three of the first six comments were “This is a mistake”, “it’s all for show”, and “<giant roll eyes>,” which I don’t find to be serious comments about a complicated solution to a complicated situation. Other people are making absurd arguments about Parasite. But if you want to call me out for ruining the thread because I used a picture instead of words to push back, that’s your option.

Moderators here can make the judgment if I’m trolling or using excessive hyperbole. I’m not going to contest anything they do.

I don't think this is an absurd argument at all, Brittain. Re: Parasite.

[Brittain33]

Doesn't this mean, almost by definition, that last year's Oscar winner, Parasite, which had a completely Korean cast, would never be able to win again? Not a lot of diversity in a cast that's all from the same ethnic background.

Literally three of the first six comments were “This is a mistake”, “it’s all for show”, and “<giant roll eyes>,” which I don’t find to be serious comments about a complicated solution to a complicated situation. Other people are making absurd arguments about Parasite. But if you want to call me out for ruining the thread because I used a picture instead of words to push back, that’s your option.

Moderators here can make the judgment if I’m trolling or using excessive hyperbole. I’m not going to contest anything they do.

I don't think this is an absurd argument at all, Brittain. Re: Parasite.

* The criteria for cast include women, LGBTQ, and people with cognitive or physical disabilities, all of whom are found in South Korea. Parasite did really well in including women as lead characters.
* Cast is only one of four criteria. Another one is who is employed in marketing and distribution, and Parasite surely had an American distributor.

Most articles are commenting on how difficult it is for any film not to qualify.

I think a lot of people are reacting to the headline or what they think this rule is, or putting out straw men about ridiculous casts, but that’s not what this does. I hate to be that guy but it really seems like people haven’t read the link.

[Horus]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

[Calthrina950]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

Modern celebrities tend to have a very high opinion of themselves, and in my view, much less respect for their devoted fans than did the celebrities of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The Oscars serve as a gratification ceremony for them, and they've increasingly used it as a platform to express their political viewpoints as well. That's their right, but I'm sure it turns off viewers who are trying to escape the real world and don't want to be exposed to such messages at that time. And the Oscars have a tendency to be out of step with the audience in terms of the movies that they recognize. Will anyone remember movies such as The Artist, Searchlight, Birdman, and The Shape of Water 70 years from now? I don't think so. Most of the movies they've honored over the decades have been forgotten or are barely talked about anymore.

[Pulaski]

I don't really see why people care about promoting diversity within an industry that's crumbling. The Oscars are only really for show these days; they often bear little resemblance to what's popular, and when they do are more reactive to films that have achieved groundswells of popularity in their own right, rather than being tastemakers. They've also always been political and based on power rather than merit, rather like the entire Hollywood industry; the answer surely is to chuck the whole industry and refuse to support it, rather than try and nibble around the edges to make it look a lot better than it is.

I don't for a second begrudge people wanting to see their stories and people who talk and look like them reflected in popular culture. I'm mostly a member of majority groups, so it's not something I face myself, but my dad, a working class bloke from the North of England, has spoken to me many times about how seeing films like Kes, with people who spoke like him and had lives like him, really meant something profound to him when he was younger. And that's just being a white working class guy; you can extrapolate that many times over when talking about groups that have faced more egregious issues throughout their existence.

The issue with doing it at the Oscars is that their influence is waning anyway; you can head over to YouTube and watch independently made films with a lot more artistic merit and a hell of a lot more diversity in their storytelling. Surely if we're focused on diversity (which we should be), we should be encouraging more democratisation of the industry in this fashion, rather than trying to spruce up a dying institution.

[Meclazine for Israel]

I watch films that Progressive Pessimist advocates through his high quality movie reviews. They are actually the ones that are interesting and worth watching, not because they won an award at the Oscars.

The VVitch
The Wicker Man

Let's get this straight.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

I watch films that Progressive Pessimist advocates through his high quality movie reviews. They are actually the ones that are interesting and worth watching, not because they won an award at the Oscars.

The VVitch
The Wicker Man

Let's get this straight.

Ah, I loved the V-vitch. 

Just curious: what are your "Oscars" in Australia?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Studio Bosses: It's just so terrible, all this inequality in the world. how can we do something about this?

Tens of thousands of underpaid workers in the film industry: how about a living wage?

Studio Bosses: hmm ... I think I have an even better idea

[Mister Mets]

It's all for show. If what I've seen on Twitter is true, you'd have to be failing on purpose for a movie not to meet 2 of these 4 standards.

It seems that the only potential effect is that some independent films won't get made, because no one's going to want to make a movie that fails to qualify for Best Picture because it doesn't meet diversity standards.

It's a start.

What I'd prefer is a requirement for cast and crew makeup together to reflect the average US ratios. So you gotta have at least 18% Hispanic or Latinx, 13% African American, 6% Asian, 1% First Nations, .2%  Pacific Islander. Obvs these would be thresholds. With gender, though, I'd actually prefer male vs female to be about equivalent, with trans folks being at least .5% of the total and non-binary folks getting a representative amount as well, which unfortunately there isn't data on yet really, but let's say .5% for them as well.

And if you want to make a movie that doesn't fit these standards, ain't nobody going to stop you. You just wouldn't be eligible for whatever award was brave enough to have these requirements as necessary for being considered for their award.

It'd also be cool to have adult age ratios in there too, basically with the under-18 numbers going to allow you to use as buffer. So at least 9% folks being 19-25, at least 12% 26-34, 26% 35-54, 13% 55-64, 16% ≥65, and then the remaining 20% to fit in any age category. Though my categories would be 18-27, 28-37, 38-47, 48-57, 58-67, ≥68, but I couldn't find a quick source on the percentages of those breakdowns that didn't require me to do my own math.

The fact that there are 20% of Americans who are under 18 would give lots of buffer room. This would, I think, help weed out "old white dudes" being a large percentage of producers and directors and also help somewhat with the always using actors younger than the ages they're supposed to represent, but the buffer would still let you make Grace and Frankie or Grumpy Old Men or a college movie.

Genuine question: Is this a joke?

Imagine trying to make a super realistic WW2 war film about nazis under those criteria.

Do the Right Thing, one of the most pointedly antiracist movies ever made, would be ineligible under these criteria because only one of the named characters is Latina, none are Asian, and very few of them are old.

I didn't say cast and crew separately, did I? You could have a cast of one and still meet these criteria.

As for the person asking if it was a joke, no, it's not. Why shouldn't the entertainment industry be representative of America as a whole, especially if they want to be considered for an award?

Imagine trying to make a super realistic WW2 war film about nazis under those criteria.

Oh no, the crew and directors etc would just have to have some PoC included, how terrible. 🙄

Some stories would naturally not include many people of color, just as some stories would naturally focus primarily on the experience of people of color, and some stories would focus on both.

The idea that every film should at a minimum represent the demographics of the United States isn't plausible. Some films will naturally have more people from marginalized groups in the cast and crew. And some films won't even be made in the US.

[Mister Mets]

To actually approve of this, to genuinely think it a good idea, one's notion of the object of cinema must be fundamentally dreary. It would be necessary to believe, to really believe, that it is best understood as production, not as art. That the great tension that defines cinema - is it culture or is it industry? Is it art or is it commerce? - is in fact non-existent, with the matter decided in hands-down in favour of the bean counters. Needless to say, this is exactly how the powers that be in Hollywood do view cinema (and always have viewed cinema), but that does not mean that they are right.

Whatever one thinks about the cinema as a whole, I don't think there's any debate to be had that the Oscar for Best Picture can not be free of "dreary" concerns about profit and investment and production and workers. So has it always been. There are other forms of recognition and other awards for the little movies that could.  

While there are arguments that the Oscar for Best Picture should go more often to films that are successful in the box office, that is not always the case. And it certainly shouldn't be an official rule.

The Hurt Locker had a box office under 50 million.
Moonlight had a box office of 65 million.

The only way a movie could ever fail this is if they went out of their way to. It would have to be an independent movie that intentionally only hired straight white men for everything, including costumes, makeup, hairstyling, etc.

I don't doubt there are some straight white men out there qualified to do hair and makeup, but they would also have to willingly go along with the white-only, straight-only project, as would all the actors, camera crew, etc., making your pool of talent even smaller.

And even if you got all of that together, what percentage of movies are considered for Best Picture, especially films not produced by the major studios? Even after contriving all of that, you would still have to hit lightning in a bottle to get into the Best Picture discussion? It's just not going to happen. I think it's safe to say these "new rules" will never prevent a film from being nominated.

There is going to be an interesting question about how we determine if people are straight white men.

A lot of people have probably observed this already, but all this really does is bias the Oscars further towards studio films: just about every major studio title basically meets criteria (c) or (d) automatically.

As with many things that the Academy does to make themselves look less embarrassing, it starts out by looking too weirdly grandiose, and then once you actually parse it, you realize that they're not actually doing anything to fix anything at all.

It seems the main effect is going to be on independent films in settings where you'd expect a lot of the characters to be white. We'll continue to see films about middle aged white male actors, British royalty, World War II soldiers, boardroom struggles, white male writers, and the mafia. The studios will make space for that, and make token efforts to make sure it meets standards.
But it might hurt the stories that aren't being told. We don't have many dramas involving the staff of a red mountain state Governor, police in a white rural community, prison escapes in Belarus, a crisis of faith for a seminary/ rabbinical school student, or the lived experiences of a boy with white trash parents in Appalachia.

And I do think studios will not want to make a movie that doesn't qualify for Best Picture, even if they're not exactly favorites to win.

Studio Bosses: It's just so terrible, all this inequality in the world. how can we do something about this?

Tens of thousands of underpaid workers in the film industry: how about a living wage?

Studio Bosses: hmm ... I think I have an even better idea

Wen the precedent is set to have this requirement, why not require clear environmental standards? Why not dictate labor practices? Why shouldn't conservatives and Christians say that the AMSPA's clear lack of action shows they don't care about Middle America?

[emailking]

It seems that the only potential effect is that some independent films won't get made, because no one's going to want to make a movie that fails to qualify for Best Picture because it doesn't meet diversity standards.

Really? The chance of any movie winning best picture is small, at least at the production stage. I don't think any movie gets made (super low budget excepted) unless they think there's a decent chance of turning a profit.

[Mister Mets]

It seems that the only potential effect is that some independent films won't get made, because no one's going to want to make a movie that fails to qualify for Best Picture because it doesn't meet diversity standards.

Really? The chance of any movie winning best picture is small, at least at the production stage. I don't think any movie gets made (super low budget excepted) unless they think there's a decent chance of turning a profit.

I suspect that any film by any studio of any note that doesn't qualify for Best Picture because there is an insufficient number of people from marginalized communities on staff is going to get bad publicity.

So here the lack of a budget for internships/ publicity for some independent studios could mean certain projects will fail to meet diversity quotas, which will guarantee bad publicity and potentially taint everyone involved.

If one good film is made that doesn't meet the standard, it will probably become a political lighting rod, in a way that will be deeply unpleasant to the people involved. Progressive theater actors probably don't want to be defended by divisive figures (especially in Hollywood) like Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro.

But the likeliest situation is that some films just won't be made, as there's a new regulatory burden.

[John Dule]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

[T'Chenka]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

All three are amazing. LMAO at Moonlight being forgotten.

[John Dule]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

All three are amazing. LMAO at Moonlight being forgotten.

Tell me one trait about the main character that makes him a unique individual.

[T'Chenka]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

All three are amazing. LMAO at Moonlight being forgotten.

Tell me one trait about the main character that makes him a unique individual.

You're going to need to re-phrase that for me to be able to respond to it.

[emailking]

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

I thought they were both good movies but not great. Parasite definitely wasn't better than Alita or Endgame. I though 1917 was the best from those nominated.