By Nelson Schneider - 09/13/20 at 04:47 PM CT
The movie industry is Big Business worldwide, with huge, prolific production centers not only in America, but in Europe, China, and India. In fact, MeltedJoystick itself exists as a sister-site for FilmCrave, which is a dedicated place for movie fanatics to review, rank, and list their favorite (and least favorite) titles from across the broad history of cinema.
Personally, though, I don’t really get all that excited about movies. With their typical two-hours-or-less runtimes and formulaic formulae, I tend to consider them to be far too ephemeral and lacking in depth when compared side-by-side with RPGs and other narrative-rich genres of videogames (and even long-form TV shows that typically encapsulate a story in no less than 12 hours rather than 2). Of course, Chris vehemently disagrees with me in this respect, which is why he writes for FilmCrave and I do not.
However, this last week, an announcement about the future of movies went public that is so deplorable, so rage-inducing that I just had to comment on it: Starting in the year 2024, all movies that wish to be considered for the Oscars’ Best Picture category will need to tick-off at least two out of four boxes in a new set of requirements. And, naturally, these requirements all deal with how ‘woke,’ politically correct, and, indeed, censorious the Fringe Left has become, thanks to the twin plagues of Fourth Wave Feminists and Social Justice Warriors.
The four categories are thus (paraphrased):
Column A) Some combination of lead actors, supporting actors, and the film’s narrative subjects must pander to Identity Politics and SJW sensibilities. These Identity Groups include racial/ethnic ‘minorities,’ females, people with Gender Dysphoria Spectrum disorders, and plain old cripples.
Column B) Some combination of behind the scenes/behind the camera leaders must slot neatly into the same Identity Groups from Column A. Relevant positions include directors, producers, cinematographers, stylists, decorators, and writers. Barring that, if 30% of the rank and file grunts fit into an appropriate Identity Group, that counts too.
Column C) The film’s production must provide paid internships and/or training opportunities for people in the Identity Groups from Column A.
Column D) The film’s marketing/publicity/distribution operations must include executives in the Identity Groups from Column A.
*sigh* *facepalm*
First, I’d like to pick some nits about the Identity Groups that are receiving the benefits of this pandering. One of the ‘racial/ethnic’ groups listed is “Hispanic/Latinx.” Not only is the word “Latinx” an abomination before the eyes of anyone who has ever taken a college level language course, it makes me think of the following image:
And, furthermore, ‘Hispanic’ is NOT a race, but a language group. Hispanics are people who speak Spanish or Portuguese as their first language, many of whom are from Spain and Portugal, and are thus White Europeans. Latin Americans, who should just be called ‘Latin’ for a proper gender-neutral term, are the result of White European Hispanics mixing with Indigenous Central/South Americans to varying degrees during the centuries since the Conquistadores. Yet there is an entirely separate category for Indigenous/Native American/Native Alaskan that is entirely superfluous in light of this fact.
Next, we have the Middle Eastern and North African ‘minority’ category. This is clearly meant as a virtue signaling and less contentious way of saying “Muslims,” but there is already, in fact, a Middle Eastern ethnic group that is highly represented in nearly every aspect of Hollywood movie making and the banking and legal infrastructures that surround it: The Hebrews. But I suppose acknowledging that fact is Anti-Semitic.
Moving on, I’d like to point out that nearly every film currently produced already meets column B’s criteria. When was the last time anyone heard of a hairstylist, make-up artist, or costumer in Hollywood who wasn’t gay?
Lastly, why are ‘Asians’ an ‘underrepresented’ group? They are far and away the single largest racial demographic ON EARTH. China makes its own movies featuring 100% Asian cast, crew, and executives ALL THE FRIGGIN’ TIME! (So do Japan and Korea… even NORTH Korea, who, admittedly, hires White defectors/actors to play villains.) India, which could go either way toward being ‘Asian’ or ‘Indo-European’ depending on who and what agenda is spinning the statistics, has Bollywood, where they make numerous popular films every year featuring predominantly Indian casts, crew, and executives.
The point is, much of these so-called ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ efforts are incredibly tone-deaf, ridiculously forced, and won’t actually do anything to make the lives of inner-city Blacks any better, which is, we all know, the real subject at hand whenever the dogwhistle of ‘diversity’ comes up.
All the Oscar committee is accomplishing with this huge, virtue signaling debacle is revealing that they don’t care about inclusivity and creating the best movies possible, but about exclusivity and preventing a repeat of the all-White Oscars from a couple years ago. The end result will be further alienating, enraging, and radicalizing straight White males who have not only faced the marginalization of the ever-growing wealth gap between the classes (like every other racial group), but are now facing a wall of deranged Leftists telling them that they deserve to be excluded even from consideration for lucrative, or even educational, positions in California’s biggest industry because of their imagined ‘privilege.’
Ultimately, these upcoming new standards will change very little, since nearly every movie made in the last decade qualifies for Columns B-D. Only Column A represents a real threat to the status quo, but I wouldn’t put it past the Movie Industry to take matters into their own hands and go Column A crazy all on their own. After all, forcing ‘people of color’ to do all the hard work behind the scenes so White people can go up on stage and give a rambling acceptance speech for an award nobody cares about it systematic racism. Right?
