Liberals figure out a way to make the Oscars even worse

I realize that many of you will read the title of this column and assume that it’s just more fake news. How could anyone possibly make the Oscars worse than they’ve been in recent years? Heck, they can’t even get much of their own liberal audience to tune in. (The 2020 edition hit an all-time low with a 5.3 rating and that was before the Pandemic hit.) And yet they’ve managed to figure out a way.

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From now on, it won’t be enough to simply make a good movie, or at least “good” as defined by the Hollywood elite. Now the prospective nominees for the Best Picture Award will be judged on whether or not the people involved in every aspect of the production are “diverse” enough. This is apparently Hollywood’s latest nod to the Black Lives Matter movement, though we might at least hope that it will include Hispanics, Asians and Indigenous Americans as well. The Los Angeles Times has the predictably woke details.

And the Oscar goes to … inclusion.

In the latest step in its ongoing effort to boost diversity both within its own ranks and across the film industry, on Tuesday the film academy announced new representation standards for films to be eligible to compete for best picture.

Developed over the past few months by a special task force as part of the organization’s Academy Aperture 2025 initiative, the standards encompass both representation onscreen — in the types of stories being told and the actors involved — as well as behind the scenes in the makeup of the crew and in the inclusivity of the companies involved.

Keep in mind that this isn’t just a case of tipping the scales to the more diverse production teams. Your movie can’t even qualify for consideration for a Best Picture nomination unless you meet at least two of the four diversity criteria. (The standard isn’t applied to other awards, but the “trickle-down” effect will produce the same result.) And since bonus points will be awarded for going above and beyond the minimum bar, you may rest assured that production houses across the land will be shooting for all four of them. So what do they have to do to qualify?

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The four categories are listed as “Onscreen Representation, Themes and Narratives,” “Creative Leadership and Project Team,” “Industry Access and Opportunities” and “Audience Development.” Aside from the “audience development” category (which I can’t make heads or tails of) you should be able to figure out the meaning behind those yourselves.

So why will this probably make the awards shows even more sucky than they have been? For a long time now, it was very rare to see the top-grossing film of the year showing up as the Best Picture winner or even a nominee in many cases. You can look down the list of the last 20 Best Picture winners and compare their box office totals to the really popular films. In 2020, Parasite won the award but it wasn’t even in the top ten for box office draw, left totally in the dust by Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King and Frozen II. Heck… Parasite didn’t make half as much money as Jumanji: The Next Level.

The year before, the same situation applied to Green Book. To find a Best Picture winner that grossed more than $100 million you need to go back to the 2013 awards when Argo took home the statue. But even then, the film didn’t come close to the top ten for box office gold. The point here is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has never given awards to movies that most of us actually enjoy and would want to see. They hand out prizes to the pictures that we’re supposed to like because of their artsy-fartsy criteria but the unwashed masses just aren’t enlightened enough to know what entertainment is good for them.

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But now, when preparing to launch a new film project, not only will the production houses continue to crank out these elite stories that nobody cares about, but they won’t even be able to recruit the best talent possible to make them. What’s that, you say? Michael Bay, one of the top-grossing directors of the modern era is available to take the helm of your new arthouse project? Sorry. He’s a straight, White, cisgender male. But we’ve got this Hispanic lesbian available who graduated film school five years ago and has directed two absolutely kick-ass documentaries on salmon migration patterns. Better grab her while she’s still on the market.

Honestly, it’s all too tiresome. I don’t even remember the last time I actually watched the Oscars. I’m pretty sure it was in the 90s. And none of this nonsense is doing anything to lure me back, I assure you.

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