THB #466: Exclusion By Inclusion

I was going to write a little review of The Beekeeper today… like smoking a joint after bad sex (though I have to say, I am not a smoker and I have never had bad sex… ha ha.)

But here came Variety - the owner of which, ironically, is responsible for last night performative, unarousing, and forgettable experience - with a little ditty about The Oscars that I think needs a good looking at. (As always, my opinions are my own and have no connection to anyone who might be advertising on the site on any given day.)

not diverse enough

Academy Announces 265 of 321 Oscar-Qualifying Films Are Eligible for Best Picture Due to Inclusivity Standards – Film News in Brief
By Jazz Tangcay, Caroline Brew

Jazz is one of the writers at the Penske Trades who I trust utterly, peaking my interest in this reporting further.

The story announces that 321 films have qualified for Oscar… and that just 265 have passed the newly required bar of “submit(ting) a confidential Academy Representation and Inclusion Standards entry form.”

That’s 17% of films submitted to The Academy that either didn’t fulfill the demands of the “representation and inclusion standards for Oscars® eligibility in the Best Picture category are designed to encourage equitable representation on and off screen to better reflect the diverse global population” or simply chose not to, failed to or refused to fill out the paperwork.

But here is where the Variety article spun my head… “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Creator, Dumb Money, The Marvels, and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour are among the films that qualified for the Oscars but are not eligible for best picture.”

So before I start checking up on the 2 movies with white male leads (and female second leads who are critically important to the stories, like The Wasp), of these 5 movies, 2 are absolutely led by and driven by female characters (The Marvels and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour) and 1 of those 2 has 3 female leads, including 1 that is Indian and another who is Black. The 3rd film (The Creator) is led a Black man, who also happens to be playing someone with “physical disabilities”… and, for shits and giggles, has a title character who is female and of color.

Not good enough. Sorry.