Sunday’s 96th edition of the Academy Awards will be the first to be held under the new DEI rules and as is always the case when screeching left-wingers are accommodated, they still aren’t happy.
In the aftermath of the 2020 death of career criminal and fentanyl addict George Floyd which ignited the current wave of anti-white discrimination in America, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences moved to incorporate the “woke” religion into Hollywood’s showcase event but now some are suggesting that the new rules are just a “flimsy and showy” facade.
Films that want to qualify for Best Picture at the Oscars are now required to meet diversity criteria.
The Academy promises that guidelines will be enforced by the 2024 ceremony, where films must meet 2 out of 4 criteria areas.
: https://t.co/DspNeQaCSd pic.twitter.com/jh95ABpP8I
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) September 9, 2020
Some showbiz execs and insiders aired their grievances to the New York Times in advance of what will be the inevitable claims of racism and sexism if the awards aren’t doled out based on the number of diversity boxes checked rather than exceptional filmmaking and solid acting.
One of those who complained to the outlet was Spike Lee, the race-obsessed director who said that while he thinks the Academy’s “heart is in the right place,” there are “a lot of loopholes” in the new rules.
The rules are as convoluted as could be expected given the input of perpetually aggrieved, emotionally fragile leftists.
According to the Times: “A checklist of four categories and nine subcategories cover almost every aspect of the filmmaking pipeline. Diversity in hiring — actors, directors, makeup artists, publicists, interns — is considered. So is the movie’s plot. To qualify, films must show that they meet two of the four main categories of representation: onscreen (actors, plot), offscreen leadership (set designers, makeup artists), training programs and marketing.”
“But critics from an array of perspectives in the film industry have described the standards as the equivalent of tinsel — flimsy and showy — doing more to gild Hollywood’s image than to help people the movie business has long overlooked,” the outlet reports.
A big problem this year is that the film which is seen as being the frontrunner for many awards including Best Picture, Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” a historical biopic of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer who was the father of the atomic bomb doesn’t have the diverse casting that would please the industry’s “woke” commissars.
Despite the cast being nearly all white – which is historically accurate for the WW II-era setting – the film still managed to “easily” meet the new diversity requirements for best picture despite, meeting one standard for offscreen hiring with about a dozen females being hired for senior crew positions and tabbing a Hispanic woman as a member of “an underrepresented racial or ethnic group” as makeup head.
“Even without those hiring decisions, ‘Oppenheimer’ would have qualified. That is because its studio, Universal, has created in-house programs, in-career training and audience development that help satisfy the rules for almost every picture it makes,” the Times states.
“The standards are not difficult to meet; I will be the first person to say that,” said Jeanell English who worked on the DEI efforts. “But what they are doing is starting critical conversations in this community about representation.”
To say that the Academy’s DEI push has been controversial would be an understatement and many had previously balked at the new rules.
“They make me vomit,” veteran actor Richard Dreyfuss told PBS “Firing Line” host Margaret Hoover last year.
“They make me vomit,” says @RichardDreyfuss of new cast and crew diversity standards for Best Picture #Oscar eligibility.
Plus he praises Laurence Olivier’s 1965 performance of Othello in blackface.
“Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man?” (1/2) pic.twitter.com/NcmpZoXe1c
— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) May 5, 2023
“This is an art form,” the “Jaws” star said. “It’s also a form of commerce, and it makes money, but it’s an art. And 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.”
This year’s ceremony will be hosted by Chuck Schumer’s ventriloquist dummy Jimmy Kimmel, the DNC talking point-spewing ABC late-night host. The Oscars will be televised by the network at 7 PM ET on Sunday, live from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
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