This is a month-and-a-half old, but if you want to immerse yourself in a peppy, smiley-faced, award-season discussion rife with shaky vibes, social uncertainty and a suppressed white-knuckled terror that dares not speak its name…a subtle sense of anxiety about possibly saying the slightly wrong thing in an indelicate way that might get you crucified on Twitter if you aren’t very careful…listen to this Collider discussion about diversity, representation and the New Academy Kidz.

Not that Scott Mantz, Jeff Sneider and Perri Nemiroff (easily the most terrified member of this trio) actually use this HE-coined term, but but they’re basically saying “look, guys, it’s all well and good for Academy and guild members (not to mention the people behind the Gotham, Spirit and BFCA awards) to argue about what constitutes true excellence and/or serious cinematic merit, but there’s a new attitude in town and the basic foundation of this attitude is that diversity and representation are just as important, consideration-wise, as the notion of quality, which may be just a code term for the kind of movie that old boomer fuddy-duds are always voting for, and you know what we mean….movies like The Post and The King’s Speech and maybe even Green Book…that line of country.

The New Academy Kidz are mainly about pushing the graying fuddy-duds off to the side and establishing new criteria in the selection of Oscar winners, and their most important standard is diversity and representation, diversity and representation and diversity and representation. They probably have no argument with a diversity-and-representation movie that also contains what the fuddy-duds would call ‘quality’ (whatever the hell that actually means) but the most important thing for them…well, I’ve said it. For they are the New Academy Kidz, and if Mantz, Sneider and Nemiroff don’t describe them and discuss their concerns in exactly the right way, they’re going to come for them in the dark of night and THEN THEY WILL KNOW WHAT PAIN AND TERROR TRULY ARE.