Taking a page from the Biden administration’s DEI push where what you are is more important that who you are and what you have accomplished in life, the folks at the Oscars have new diversity and inclusion requirements in order to make the grade to be considered to be an academy award-winning movie nominee in 2024 for the 2025 awards.
Movies will have minimum requirements from now on concerning inclusion and representation – and then after the moviemakers adhere to the rules, they can be eligible to be considered for “best picture.”
But not everyone is happy. Elderly white actor Richard Dreyfuss told PBS’ Firing Line that the new rules “make me vomit.”
He went on to say, “No one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is. What are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. You have to let life be life and I’m sorry, I don’t think there is a minority or majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”
I expect that the racist and sexist Dreyfuss will be walking back his statements soon or risk being canceled and banned from the movie industry altogether.
The Daily Mail [1] reports that if a movie doesn’t have enough gay, disabled, women and Black actors in the cast and crew, they can forget about getting a non from the Oscars – no matter how good the movie is. I think the phrase “best picture” should be changed to reflect reality and be called “best woke produced picture.”
Laughably, the current rules of the Oscars talks about the “96th Academy Awards of Merit.” LOL. And the description of the awards still says “Academy Awards of Merit shall be given annually to honor outstanding artistic and scientific achievements in theatrically released feature-length motion pictures, and to honor other achievements as provided for in these rules and approved by the Board of Governors.”
Well they have the last part right at least – “in rules.” However, with those new woke rules, they can pretty much disregard the whole first part of that sentence.
In addition to updating their criteria to win a best picture award, they have also announced mandatory “unconscious bias training” for all Academy governors and staff – which is also open to the 9,000 members as well, who I’m sure will all jump at the chance.
Folks who want to win best picture nominations have to meet at least two of these requirements according to The Daily Mail: Having at least one lead character in the movie be from an ‘an underrepresented racial or ethnic group’, having at least 30 per cent of the cast be from at least two underrepresented groups- ethnic minorities, women LGBTQ+ people or people with disabilities – or having the movie’s subject focus on one.
As far as the audience for the Oscars goes, the Hollywood stars have been chasing away us little people for years with their elite political wokeness speeches about politics and everything else they want to spout off about.
So if they want to give away a bunch of awards based on race and gender instead of actual talent and merit – and the quality of a film – no one out here in the cheap seats is going to notice. We weren’t watching them anyway.