This year’s Oscar winners in the most coveted categories skewed more white than they have in years, undermining the film industry’s self-professed fidelity to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” principles.
Announced in 2020, the Academy Awards rules mandating that movies nominated for Best Picture must adhere to DEI standards were in effect for the first time last night.
“The aperture must widen to reflect our diverse global population in both the creation of motion pictures and in the audiences who connect with them. The Academy is committed to playing a vital role in helping make this a reality,” Academy President David Rubin and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson said in a press release announcing the new rules at the time. “We believe these inclusion standards will be a catalyst for long-lasting, essential change in our industry.”
Yet this “representation and inclusion standard” was not made evident by the award show’s results.
For instance, the big winner of the evening was the movie Oppenheimer, which is about white men building the atomic bomb. It garnered Oscars for white men in the prestigious categories of Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), and Best Director (Christopher Nolan), in addition to Best Picture.
Of the categories that usually receive the most attention, only the Best Supporting Actress nod went to a nominee who was not white, Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers. The Best Actress award went to Emma Stone over critics’ darling Lily Gladstone, who was favored to win because she qualifies as and portrayed a Native American.
In contrast, the 2023 Oscars’ most decorated film was Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was made with a predominantly Asian cast and crew. Its Asian co-director and lead actress picked up Oscars. The previous year, Will Smith, who is black, won Best Actor.
Peachy Keenan — the pseudonym used by the author of THE WHITES, Episode 1: “Cancelled” and DOMESTIC EXTREMIST
A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War who describes herself as a “convert to Catholicism from secular nothingness and liberal feminism” — pointed out on X that DEI proponents were likely to be dissatisfied with the winning demographic in several awards categories.
Donald Trump triggered Jimmy Kimmel while he was hosting the Oscars. pic.twitter.com/u3DkGVBtuF
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) March 11, 2024
“DEI tried so hard to work. It should have at least gotten a participation trophy,” social media user @DadoftheDesert, said in reply, a nod to the lack of impact the rules seemed to have on the Oscars this year.
The DEI metrics for Best Picture have similarly been lambasted by actor Richard Dreyfuss, who has previously called them “thoughtless” and “patronizing,” according to The New York Times.
In addition to criticism of the seeming hypocrisy of the left-wing film elites’ picks this year, there has purportedly been fatigue with the award show itself over politicizing the event. That sentiment was expressed by former President Donald Trump, whose off-the-cuff take on the show earned it a place in the program being read aloud by host Jimmy Kimmel to wrap up the night.
Trump suggested on Truth Social that the Oscars perenially suffers from trying to be “politically correct,” which has caused the show to be “Disjointed, boring, and very unfair” for years. He then asked, “Why don’t they just give the Oscars to those that deserve them[?]”
The Dallas Express has previously reported that viewership for the Academy Awards is just a fraction of what it used to be about a decade ago.
As social media user @MorganRyan1988 quipped, “When the wallet starts to get thin so does the virtue signaling.”
