Oscars' diversity changes : What could it mean?

The announcement of the new Oscars’ representation and inclusion standards has caused a lot of debate within the industry and amongst audiences worldwide.

These new standards required for the Best Picture category “are designed to encourage equitable representation on and off screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience” and won’t come into effect until the 96th Oscars, so in 2024.

The decision follows several years of #OscarsSoWhite outcries and protests for lack of representation and diversity. In particular, these new rules encourage better representation for people of colour, women LGBTQ+ and people with disabilities.

The press release from the most famous golden statuette explains how the new standards were inspired by “the British Film Institute (BFI) Diversity Standards used for certain funding eligibility in the UK and eligibility in some categories of the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) Awards“.

Well done to the BAFTA for being the first to introduce in 2019 diversity and inclusion criteria required in order to be eligible for its awards. However, this didn’t save the organisation from receiving some criticism as well: who can forget Margot Robbie being nominated twice in the Best Supporting Actress category? A nomination that baffled even the actress herself and indicates room for progress.

 Though the need to ensure diversity in front and behind the camera is paramount, the Academy decision was met with mixed feelings.

The main criticism is that the new standards won’t allow directors to tell the stories they want, instead forcing them to respect rules and codes that would be detrimental to the stories portrayed on screen. Someone online commented that great art isn’t created using a checklist and that the creation of “quotas” to ensure representation could result in badly written characters and storylines put here and there for the sake of diversity, rather than benefitting the creation of meaningful art. 

Others criticise the real effectiveness of the standards in promoting diversity. For example, in order to be considered for the Best Picture category, a film production must have at least 2 departments led by underrepresented groups. However, women are often found as heads of departments in areas such as hair and makeup and this would qualify a film as complying to the new diversity standards, without having produced major steps forward in other departments where women are far less represented. 

At this point, a question needs to be asked: should art be made in order to win awards? Should the golden statuette be the filmmakers’ goal while choosing the stories they want to tell? Or isn’t this a checklist in itself?

Perhaps the new requirements won’t change anything. Or maybe they will encourage new stories to be told.  Maybe -and that’s the most important thing- what these new standards suggest is that audiences crave for diversity and want to see new versions of on-screen realities that match a little closer the one we live every day. Does the beautiful cheerleader really need to be white and blonde? Can’t the summer blockbuster romance be a queer one?  Or perhaps even if some stories will be about white, straight, men, they will be told by a more diverse crew behind the camera, providing a breath of fresh air. Because every little story deserves to be told if it’s authentic to the people who tell it and the people who hear it.