"In September of 2020, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their new diversity inclusion standards for the Oscars best picture nominees, which will first go into effect next year during the 2024 Academy Awards," -- AVa Rukavina, 10th Grade
These new requirements were in part, a response to the 2016 #OscarSoWhite controversy, a boycott initiated by social media activists against the Oscars for their lack of diversity in the nominees and the academy itself. In both the 2015 and 2016 Oscars, all 20 nominees in the acting category were white, along with the academy members being made up of a large majority of white men.
The standards, detailed in full on the Oscars website, have four main categories: On-Screen Representation & Themes, Creative Leadership & Project Team, Industry Access & Opportunities, and Audience Development. To be eligible for a Best Picture nomination, a film must meet the criteria for two of the four categories.
The standards, detailed in full on the Oscars website, have four main categories: On-Screen Representation & Themes, Creative Leadership & Project Team, Industry Access & Opportunities, and Audience Development. To be eligible for a Best Picture nomination, a film must meet the criteria for two of the four categories.
While the Academy likely only put these new guidelines in place to reduce the amount of public backlash they have faced in recent years, the plan is a proactive idea that might genuinely improve the opportunities for marginalized groups in Hollywood. The Oscars are one of, if not the most respected awards in the nation, perhaps even the world. Filmmakers everywhere aspire to one day have their movie nominated for Best Picture, so these requirements could affect great change in the demographics of Hollywood.
But despite their good intentions, there are numerous ways in which studios could work around these restrictions without expending much effort. For example, The Industry Access & Opportunities standard can be achieved easily, so long as a studio has the money to pay interns. Because of the way Hollywood has been set up and run for the past century, these larger corporations that have the money to do so are owned mostly by white men. If a company has filled this requirement, they’re already half way done – they now just have to cast a few of their secondary actors as women or people of color, and they're eligible for Best Picture.
On top of all this, due to the lack of specificity in what defines a marginalized person, many studios could quite easily lie or stretch the truth about the ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity of any member of the cast and crew. The Oscars website does list the ethnicities and races they deem to be underrepresented in media, but many questions might arise from this. What if an actor “appears” white but is Indigenous? Do they have to prove their geneology? What if an actor is mixed with white? Are they still a person of color? If so, where’s the line?
Michelle Yeoh, star of the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All At Once, has been cited by many news outlets as the first Asian woman to be nominated for the Best Actress category, a statement that has sparked larger discourse about race and ethnicity. Merle Oberon, who was nominated for best actress in the 1935 film The Dark Angel, told the public she was white, however it was revealed that her mother was half white, half Sri Lankan, and of Māori descent. Oberon was at the time considered by the public to be white, and was genetically more than 50% white, so does she qualify as the first Asian woman to be nominated for best actress or not? Had The Dark Angel been nominated for best picture with these new standards in place, would Merle’s qualify as a lead from an underrepresented racial group?
Similar questions arise when you think about queer people making up the cast & crew. Queerness is in most instances, not a thing you can prove – sexual orientation is not a fixed thing, and is perfectly capable of changing numerous times in a person’s lifetime. A woman could be married to a man but that does not automatically mean she identifies as heterosexual. Many people, especially in the public eye, prefer not to share their sexuality at all. So they haven’t confirmed that they’re queer, but they also haven’t confirmed that they aren’t. Studios submitting their movies for best picture consideration could claim that 30% of their crew identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community, then there would be no way for the Academy to argue against that.
The flaws within these policies become evident quickly because people's identities are not so simply defined. You can’t quantify diversity.
So, what’s the alternative? What rules can be put in place so the Oscars can be more equitable, favoring movies made by and centering marginalized groups?
Maybe what we need is not a set of flimsy restrictions that can be easily bent and broken, but real systemic change from within the academy. Since 2016, The Oscars have done some work to have the Academy members more accurately reflect the diversity of the population. However it remains disproportionately white and male. With mostly white men controlling both the nominees and winners of the Oscars, it’s not much of a surprise that it’s the stories of white men that are being featured.
To create a more equitable Oscars, it is necessary to not only have Academy members mirror the demographics of the general population, but to have an even greater emphasis on underrepresented groups in the Academy; to have the voters of the Oscars be disproportionately queer, people of color, and female, to at least partially atone for how the film industry has for decades, denied the work of marginalized peoples as part of the film canon. With more marginalized people in the Academy actually voting for the Oscar nominees and winners, those films will inevitably reflect that diversity.
