Asked about the Academy’s “inclusion standards,” which basically say that a given film will not be eligible for Oscars unless the cast and crew are seriously and specifically diverse (i.e., no films like Ordinary People ever again), Academy CEO Bill Kramer has been quoted by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg as follows:
“We don’t want to legislate art” — HE says bullshit. “That’s not what this is about” — ditto. “We want filmmakers to continue to make the films they want to make” — bullshit. “I’m very happy to announce that the best picture nominees from this past year all would have qualified under our inclusion standards” — terrific! “At the all-member meeting we’ll be talking more about that because that’s a big point of discussion for our members, and we want to be very clear that we don’t want this to be onerous or punitive — we want this to be collaborative” — bullshit.
The Academy’s inclusion standards are a form of institutional terror or, if you will, paranoid, watch-your-back virtue signalling. Because if you don’t support the inclusion standards 100% and with all your heart and soul, you’re either an out-and-out racist or a closeted one.
Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, posted this morning (8.26): “A friend of mine called the way the Oscars featured almost all Black performers and presenters as a ‘new kind of blackface.’
“The Academy is 80% white. America is just under 60% white. America is also 95% heterosexual. Americans believe in God by about 80%. These stats are starting to shift, no doubt. GenZ tends to be the generation that is more LGBTQIA, less religious, and more ‘woke’ for sure. But we’re still talking about the minority pop, not the majority.
“The Oscars can’t draw the majority because they are singularly obsessed with their outward image, as with most of the top 1% that runs Hollywood. They have almost ceased being able to tell good stories and now much find ways to tell good stories under the thumb of fundamentalism. It is wrong to police art in this way, and I don’t care what Twitter thinks about that. It is simply the truth, proven century after century. Dogmatic art is not art — it’s propaganda.
“Executives are deathly afraid of being called out for racism. It is bad press they don’t believe they can afford with an army of Orwellian Children Spies breathing down their necks. The Oscars, and much of the films that will pass their required standards, reflect the paranoia in the white community, not the actual power in that community. In other words, how much of it is simply ‘virtue signaling,’ and how much of it is actual change? And if it is change, what is it changing exactly?
“Yes, they are trying to legislate art. All the executives at all studios who make content are legislating art. They’re forcing artists to reflect a specific ideology that serves their newfound religion and gets them off the hook. Remember, the people at the top who hold power are still the same — across all institutions of power in this country. They are, therefore, allowing marginalized groups to be presented as proof that they are prioritizing activism.”
