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In 2015, after the Oscars announced a pool of 20 all-white acting nominees, the then-president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was asked if the group had a diversity problem.
“Not at all,” replied the leader, Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “No way.”
What a difference five years make. After a second set of all-white actors was nominated and activist April Reign’s #OscarsSoWhite hashtag became a rallying cry, the academy began taking great strides to diversify a membership that had been primarily white and male for nine decades. Those inclusion goals were met months ago, but this week, the academy unveiled an even more ambitious diversity initiative intended to reshape not just how movies are rewarded, but who is hired to make them in the first place.
Intended to go into effect at the 96th Academy Awards in 2024, these new guidelines will require films to meet two of the four diversity standards in order to be eligible for a best picture nomination. It’s an initiative that could, on the face of it, encourage studios to implement more equitable hiring practices and broaden the range of stories told.
Still, while the announcement has shocked Hollywood, the new guidelines are not as strict as they may initially appear.
The first set of stipulations, grouped together as Standard A, has already garnered the most attention, and with good reason: It’s meant to encourage diversity in front of the camera for an industry that still defaults to white actors. To meet the demands of Standard A, only one of these three criteria must be met:
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The story should focus on women, LGTBQ people, a racial or ethnic group, or the disabled.
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At least 30 percent of the cast must be actors from at least two of those four under-represented categories.
An emphasis on the last two criteria would radically change the stories that get the green light and the people who appear in them. But the first criterion, which requires that “at least one of the major actors or supporting actors be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group,” will be easy to satisfy for most films. Recently nominated for best picture as “Joker,” which has a lot of white stars but features Zazie Beetz as the possible love interest, or “La La Land,” a white-starred love story with John Legend in a supporting role. . , you could still navigate through Standard A with little to worry about.
Standard B focuses on behind-the-scenes recruiting and requires productions to meet at least one of the following criteria:
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Two or more department heads, that is, jobs as a director, cinematographer or composer, must be women, LGTBQ, disabled, or part of an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.
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At least six other crew members must be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.
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At least 30 percent of the film crew must come from the four underrepresented groups that are continually outlined in these guidelines.
The first criterion initially seems easier to satisfy, as department heads such as costume designers, makeup artists, stylists, and casting directors lean heavily towards women, although there is an additional stipulation: at least one of those jobs It must also be for someone from an underrepresented race or group. ethnicity, which means that simply hiring white women will not meet the requirement. Still, largely white best picture nominees like “The Irishman” and “The Tree of Life,” which employed Mexican casting directors and filmmakers, would have no problem meeting the demands of Standard B.
If you’re starting to realize that most best picture hopefuls wouldn’t have to change a thing under the new guidelines, just wait until you hit the C and D standards. The C standard requires one of two criteria to be met:
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The film’s distributor or finance company must have at least two interns from an underrepresented group.
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The company producing, distributing or financing the film must offer training or job opportunities to people from these underrepresented groups.
Just about any studio with a strong internship program would already meet those stipulations, and Standard D is even simpler: it simply asks that some of a film’s senior marketing, advertising, and distribution executives belong to an underrepresented group. Given the number of gay men and women working in the advertising field, that’s an easy hurdle to clear for any studio.
Since only two of the four standards need to be met for a film to qualify for the Oscar jackpot, and Standards C and D are so easy for most studios to meet, contenders for best picture could remain. quite homogeneous both behind and in front of the prize. camera. In other words, if a filmmaker still wants to make a war movie about white men like “1917” or “American Sniper,” that’s allowed by the new Oscars guidelines as long as the studio distributing it has done the bare minimum in hiring. Interns and Marketing Executive.
Given that, will anything really change? Yes, but it is something much more difficult to measure: perception. Even if the new guidelines allow for broad solutions, they will likely prompt filmmakers, financiers, and studio executives to take the issue of diversity more seriously, and could be of great help to department heads of color. And now that the topic is on the table, Oscar voters may be interested in how specifically one contender’s diversity standards were met, and which movies they missed with a handful of interns.
At the very least, this is all a tacit admission that the academy is not a passive participant when it comes to diversity in Hollywood, simply indebted to films made outside the purview of the organization. Oscars can attach great importance, and their imprimatur has long influenced movies that get the green light and filmmakers who are trusted to tell stories. If these new guidelines say anything loud and clear, it’s that a lack of diversity isn’t just an Oscars issue. It belongs to everyone.
