Are the Oscars Over?

“It’s filmmaking by affirmative action. It’s totally daft, and it can’t be done.”

Have you heard about Aperture 2025?

It may sound like a Roland Emmerich sci-fi movie, but it’s actually more frightening. And much more controversial. It’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s latest initiative to make Hollywood more equitable and diverse—more woke—by changing the rules by which films are eligible for Best Picture nominations.

Here’s how it works: Starting in 2024, producers will be required to submit a summation of the race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status of members of their movie’s cast and crew. If a particular movie does not have enough people of color or disabled people or gays or lesbians working on the set—and what is “enough” will be determined by a knotty tangle of byzantine formularies—then that movie will no longer be eligible for an Oscar.

Imagine if you wanted to build a house.  But someone tells you that in order to get the house inspected and approved that you had to agree to very strict percentages of racial, ethnic and sexual orientation.   And none of the architects or foreman forepersons could be white, Christian or male!    Would that be a problem for you?

Today if you had to go to see a doctor, would you be happy to be told that that doctor was an affirmative action doctor?  Would you like to see a AA stamp of approval on the license of the mechanic working on the brakes for your car?

Would you  be very interested in paying money to go watch an affirmantive action movie?

Fast forward to 2025, when the first Best Picture nominations adhering to these requirements will be announced. One can easily imagine a grotesque new parlor game in which the audience speculates on how a film passed the baroque diversity metrics required to land a nomination—a new and not-so-improved version of Guess Which Star is Gay. Or perhaps Oscar viewers will wonder which great films might have been overlooked simply because, through laziness or accident or resentment, their producers failed to adhere to these standards.

Yeah, the Oscars and maybe the movie industry in America are dying of this self inflicted wound.