India may never qualify for Best Picture with Oscars 2024 new diversity rules

The arts never were — and arguably should not be — an equal opportunity employer.

The Oscar awards ceremony for 2024 is still nine months away. It is scheduled for March 10 next year. But the biggest Oscar of them all, Best Picture, will have very different rules.

Starting this year, to be nominated for the Best Picture award, a film will have to satisfy at least two of the following four conditions set by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organises the Oscars.

A. The film must feature “at least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors…from an underrepresented group”, such as women, racial or ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ and the disabled; or “at least 30 per cent of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two” of underrepresented groups; or “the main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centred on an underrepresented group(s)”.

B. The film’s creative team must have a minimum number or percentage (specified by the Academy) of members from underrepresented groups, from the crew on the studio floor right up to leadership positions — producer, director, writer, cinematographer, editor and so on.

C. The film’s distribution or financing company must have paid apprenticeships or internships for underrepresented groups — a threshold number has been specified by the Academy.
D. “The studio and/or film company (must have) multiple in-house senior executives from among (women and racial or ethnic group)…on their marketing, publicity, and/or distribution teams.”

The aim is to address diversity, equity and inclusion concerns. The criteria were announced by the Academy in September 2020, as part of something called the Academy Aperture 2025 initiative, which said that the rules would kick in with Oscar 2024.

Now, there is no question that Hollywood has suffered traditionally from systemic racism. Hattie McDaniel, the first Black person to win an Oscar — Best Supporting Actress in 1939 for her role in Gone With The Wind — could not even attend the film’s premiere in Atlanta because it was held at a whites-only theatre. At the Oscar ceremony, she had to sit at a segregated table in one corner of the hall.

The first Black man to win the Best Actor award was Sidney Poitier for Lilies In The Field, in 1963, 34 years after the Oscars were launched. And it was only in the 21st century that a Black woman won Best Actress — Halle Berry for zin 2001, and she remains the only one till date.

The Best Director list does not have a single Black person’s name in it, and only one film directed by a Black person has ever won Best Picture — Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave (2013).

In 2004, actress Geena Davis set up the Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media. The institute’s findings are eye-opening. As the New York Times reports: “In the 101 top-grossing G-rated films (no age restrictions on viewing) from 1990 to 2005, just 28 percent of speaking characters were female. Even in crowd scenes — even in (animation films) — male characters vastly outnumber female ones. In the 56 top grossing films of 2018, women portrayed in positions of leadership were four times more likely than men to be shown naked.”

The new standards the Academy has laid down are obviously an attempt to atone for its past sins. So it is introducing a job reservation system.

Yet, while one sees the Academy’s logic, one wonders how it will impact a business which is essentially — or at least claims to be — built on creativity.
Condition C seems fair. But it is interesting that Condition D, relating to marketing, publicity and distribution, is the only condition of the four that does not specify a minimum number or percentage. It only calls for “multiple in-house senior executives” from the underrepresented groups. “Multiple”, according to Merriam-Webster, means “consisting of, including, or involving more than one”. So a company with just two senior executives who are Black or Asian or LGBTQ+ or disabled meets the criterion.

So, when it comes to decision-making positions on the pure business side, the Academy does not appear too bothered about diversity, equity and inclusion.

Conditions A and B deal directly with the creative process.

Condition A gives the makers three options. One, to be nominated for Best Picture, a film must feature “at least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors from an underrepresented group”. Among the films nominated for Best Picture for this year’s Oscars was All Quiet On The Western Front. It won the Best International Feature Film award. How on earth can a film about German soldiers in the World War I feature anyone other than white men in all the “significant” roles? That would be a travesty and an insult to the memory of the hundreds of thousands of innocents who died in an insane war.

Two, “at least 30 per cent of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two” of underrepresented groups. Just imagine the Excel spreadsheet that a film’s director, writer and casting director would have to work on for days, if not months, to crack that one. Imagine trying to make The Godfather with these restrictions. “Maybe we can have Tom Hagen in a wheelchair? Are we up to 30 per cent with at least two groups yet?” “No, I think we need to put Sonny and Luca Brasi too in wheelchairs.”

The third option — about storylines centred on underrepresented groups — seems to imply that a film with an LGBTQ+ theme will have a natural headstart over, say, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer about the enigmatic scientist who led the project to build the first nuclear bomb.

If these rules were applied with retrospective effect, it would mean — to take only a few examples from the last 10 years — that films like 1917, Dunkirk, The Big Short, The Revenant and Argo could not have been nominated for Best Picture (and Argo actually won the award). Unless, of course, they fulfilled two of the other three conditions.

Condition C is again a job reservation edict, but on the creative side of the business. Which may not help improve the quality of a film in any way. In many cases, it would only mean increased costs as studios try to meet the “quotas” and do their own thing anyway.

No one in their right mind will oppose affirmative action to help underprivileged people. But restrictions — which is what Condition A is about — on what stories can be told to have some hope of awards and even commercial success (a Best Picture nomination invariably boosts a film’s box office collection) smacks of pre-emptive censorship and authoritarianism.

The arts never were — and arguably should not be — an equal opportunity employer. Of course, the arts are an unfair world, but legislating to constrict the scope of creative ideas will not make it any more fair. As all of history tells us, it only succeeds in curbing excellence.

The new rules also mean that an Indian film can never get nominated for Best Picture, unless of course the Academy decides that all Indians are an “underrepresented group”.