The Academy Awards are often considered the most prestigious – certainly the most famous – movie awards, and it’s been around for almost 100 years now. But the Academy has always shown a willingness to tinker with the categories and standards, even as recently as earlier this year in light of COVID-19.
How much the Oscars actually reflects the best films of the year is debatable (Bong Joonho, who cleaned up last year with Parasite, famously called the Oscars a “very local” awards show). But year after year, the Academy has long been biased towards a certain pigmentation of American films and filmmakers. #OscarsSoWhite may have started trending as a hashtag in 2015, but its problems with diversity have been present since the very beginning.
Last month, the Oscars unveiled a new set of “representation and inclusion standards“. By 2024, films will be eligible for Best Picture consideration by the Academy only if it meets certain representation criteria in at least 2 of the following 4 areas:
- On-screen representation, themes, and narratives
- Creative leadership and project team
- Industry access and opportunities
- Audience development
The lack of on-screen representation (and for that matter, behind-the-camera diversity) certainly is not a new problem in Hollywood, and it’s encouraging that the Academy – which is still heavily comprised of white men – is finally doing something about it. But will this really have the desired impact, or is this another instance of corporate virtue-signaling?
This new standard only affects Best Picture eligibility and none of the other categories. This makes sense from a practical perspective, but at the same time it demonstrates how strange it is to promulgate these standards from an awards-giving rather than a movie-producing approach. It’s like if a school had no diversity or affirmative action standards for the admission of its students, but did only for honor roll purposes. The analogy isn’t perfect – the Academy is not the one making the films – but it still feels like something is missing.
It’s also clear that these standards are not very rigorous. The last two standards relating to industry access and audience development simply require some participation (with no requirement of significance) from underrepresented groups in apprenticeships/internships and marketing, publicity, and distribution. It’s such a low standard that it would be embarrassing for a potential Best Picture film to not qualify (it’s been reported that 73% of recent Best Picture winners would have qualified), especially with a 3 year head start. On the other hand, if a very well-received film in the future somehow does not make the cut, well, be prepared for some heavy backlash.
For some time now, we’ve had A-list actors and directors powerful enough to have some say in the importance of diversity and inclusion in the filmmaking process; inclusion riders are a promising and relatively recent concept in the industry. But in the end, money talks. LGBTQ films have long been prestige fare but not necessarily commercial hits. It still feels like the biggest changes for more representation in the film industry have and will continue to come from box-office successes like Crazy Rich Asians and Black Panther.
