"It is essential to acknowledge the systemic impact of historical injustices."
Lots to unpack there. Essential why? According to whom? "Systemic"? According to whom? What if I disagree that there are historical injustices, or that there was a systemic impact, or that it's essential? This is your opinion. In an industry predicated on freed…
"It is essential to acknowledge the systemic impact of historical injustices."
Lots to unpack there. Essential why? According to whom? "Systemic"? According to whom? What if I disagree that there are historical injustices, or that there was a systemic impact, or that it's essential? This is your opinion. In an industry predicated on freedom of conscience, you are entitled to that belief, but no one is entitled to use it as a predicate for the imposition of policy on anyone else. Those who disagree wholesale with that statement should feel free voice that disagreement without suffering any consequences.
The problem with your outline of reparations is that you cannot "address the enduring consequences" without burdening those who had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Unless you can "show the receipts" that connect cause and effect and outline specifically the actions to the consequences and who and what is to blame, the entire concept is hopelessly flawed. Most of humanity has in some way offended some other part of humanity. Disentangling that is impossible. It's why most of us prefer to simply let the past be the past and focus on the future. "Reparations" is a recipe for making everything worse and nothing better.
Your observations about human nature are not incorrect, but who is to be the blameless moral authority who sorts out what is owed by whom to whom? It's an impossible task. You simply cannot correct the harms of the past. It's not possible. Everyone who has ever tried has made things worse. Look forward. Not backward.
In regard with Blacks, the explanation lies in 400 years of vicious repression and violence and the bitter legacy it has left. That is what I call systemic. Unless you believe that the crime and poverty rate is a genetic characteristic.
Obviously deviated from the main point I made in my first comment: You oversimplified the criteria in your article for the candidate movies. Your depiction of the criteria was wrong.
The criteria are enumerated on the Academy's site. They unequivocally state that eligibility for Best Picture is no longer simply a matter of being a feature-length movie released within the calendar year in Los Angeles or New York. It must now meet a lengthy set of "inclusion standards" which have nothing to do with the arts. The reason? As I stated in the piece, even if a massive majority of Academy members elect to nominate a film that does not meet those standards, that film will be disqualified, and not because it's not a good film. It will be disqualified because it does not adhere to an arbitrary set of social values. So the Academy openly now takes the position that if you run afoul of an arbitrary set of social values, no matter how good your film is or how beloved it is, they will now allow it to be nominated.
You can argue that the rules have no teeth, in which case you'd need to justify why they should even exist. You can also argue that the inclusion standards address very real historic harms, in which case you would have to explain why that should be the purview of the Academy.
My depiction of the criteria was that they prioritize ethnicity, sexuality and ability/disability. By the Academy's own published materials, that is accurate.
"It is essential to acknowledge the systemic impact of historical injustices."
Lots to unpack there. Essential why? According to whom? "Systemic"? According to whom? What if I disagree that there are historical injustices, or that there was a systemic impact, or that it's essential? This is your opinion. In an industry predicated on freedom of conscience, you are entitled to that belief, but no one is entitled to use it as a predicate for the imposition of policy on anyone else. Those who disagree wholesale with that statement should feel free voice that disagreement without suffering any consequences.
The problem with your outline of reparations is that you cannot "address the enduring consequences" without burdening those who had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Unless you can "show the receipts" that connect cause and effect and outline specifically the actions to the consequences and who and what is to blame, the entire concept is hopelessly flawed. Most of humanity has in some way offended some other part of humanity. Disentangling that is impossible. It's why most of us prefer to simply let the past be the past and focus on the future. "Reparations" is a recipe for making everything worse and nothing better.
Your observations about human nature are not incorrect, but who is to be the blameless moral authority who sorts out what is owed by whom to whom? It's an impossible task. You simply cannot correct the harms of the past. It's not possible. Everyone who has ever tried has made things worse. Look forward. Not backward.
In regard with Blacks, the explanation lies in 400 years of vicious repression and violence and the bitter legacy it has left. That is what I call systemic. Unless you believe that the crime and poverty rate is a genetic characteristic.
And that has what, precisely, to do with movies and the arts and what films should be eligible for "Best Picture"?
Obviously deviated from the main point I made in my first comment: You oversimplified the criteria in your article for the candidate movies. Your depiction of the criteria was wrong.
The criteria are enumerated on the Academy's site. They unequivocally state that eligibility for Best Picture is no longer simply a matter of being a feature-length movie released within the calendar year in Los Angeles or New York. It must now meet a lengthy set of "inclusion standards" which have nothing to do with the arts. The reason? As I stated in the piece, even if a massive majority of Academy members elect to nominate a film that does not meet those standards, that film will be disqualified, and not because it's not a good film. It will be disqualified because it does not adhere to an arbitrary set of social values. So the Academy openly now takes the position that if you run afoul of an arbitrary set of social values, no matter how good your film is or how beloved it is, they will now allow it to be nominated.
You can argue that the rules have no teeth, in which case you'd need to justify why they should even exist. You can also argue that the inclusion standards address very real historic harms, in which case you would have to explain why that should be the purview of the Academy.
My depiction of the criteria was that they prioritize ethnicity, sexuality and ability/disability. By the Academy's own published materials, that is accurate.