The Hollywood Reporter: Last fall, an independent filmmaker was filling out an online form to put forward his movie for Oscar consideration when some questions on the Academy’s submissions site caught him off guard. The site asked about his cast and crewmembers’ race, gender and sexual orientations, and had some questions about their health — whether they had autism, for instance, or dealt with chronic pain or mental illness.
2 comments:
In reading the actual description of the standards that films are expected to meet, the expectations are comically low. The idea of disrupting so many peoples’ privacy by collecting the information in the first place, when all it takes to qualify is to have one significant actor from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, is wild. It’s 2023 – I would hope by now the memo has been received that no one wants to watch movies that are just about white people. It should be easy to meet these specifications, which feels like a sign that they are not doing enough for diversity. I also don’t know what the solution is for the privacy concerns. I agree that the current state is uncomfortable at best, and deeply invasive at worst. I know I wouldn’t want to disclose every part of my identity and open myself up to possible discrimination; the workplace is not always a safe space to come out. It’s frustrating because that’s what we’re trying to change, but the process of doing that seems to be making it worse. Hopefully we can find a way to encourage and require more diversity without invading people’s privacy in this way or treating it like checking boxes off a quota.
This article is really interesting and honestly a little bit strange to me just because it feels just a little bit offputting to be asking people to disclose all this information even if they are able to keep it slightly anonymous. It’s still strange to me that there setting it up and sent your way where The companies have to ask their employees what they identify as. This is something that is explicitly illegal and I’m sure there’s a better way to make sure that the Oscars are promoting films that are more diverse than simply asking the filmmakers is your film, diverse, and in what ways. Right now they have it set up as if they have a list of boxes that you need to check off and as long as you just hit those boxes you qualify, which makes it feel insincere or in their action and quite frankly feels a bit excessive. I think that it is smart of them to make sure that they are more inclusive on their nominations
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