The Academy announced new initiatives that would require films to fulfill certain diversity requirements to qualify for Best Picture. Failure to meet these diversity requirements would eliminate the film from receiving an award.
The Academy claimed that these rules "are designed to encourage equitable representation on and off-screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience." Although diversity is important, the choice to prioritize it over art raises a few questions.
The Academy has spent years organizing international cinema into the “Best Foreign Language Film” category and not a single foreign language film won Best Picture until Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed film “Parasite” earlier this year.
In 1989, Spike Lee’s racially classic, “Do The Right Thing,” was released and was critically acclaimed. The film was not nominated for a single Academy Award. This move was deemed so egregious that Kim Basinger, the Oscars host of that year called out The Academy before presenting the Best Picture winner. The Academy reeks of the Hollywood elitism and favoritism that permeates the mainstream American cinematic landscape.
Instead of amplifying diverse voices, The Academy is hampering artistic integrity and ultimately showing that they have no grasp about the medium they claim to represent. Even if the directors and writers of such films do not care about the awards, a studio might put extra pressure on them to conform to these rules. I doubt that studio-imposed representation will equate to good or genuine representation. Studio interference has long been an issue in Hollywood, and these measures might just make things worse for already struggling creatives in an uncertain medium.
Filmmakers should have no “requirements” imposed upon them, it is just another sign that the authorities in the medium do not see film as art, but as nothing more than a revenue stream. The fact that The Academy entertained adding a “most popular film” category further proves this. Maybe instead of trying to get all artists to conform, they could actually amplify some more minority voices who are already making films. They should also look more towards international cinema and the independent sphere if they truly wish to diversify- as The Academy’s Hollywood bias is ultimately in contradiction to any attempt to diversify their awards.