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Oscars So White: 8 Ways to Fix the Academy Diversity Problem

Oscars So White: 8 Ways to Fix the Academy Diversity Problem

Like many Academy members, I was embarrassed and
disappointed when this year’s Oscar nominees were announced, but I wasn’t
shocked. After all, no season passes without several scathing articles about
the lack of diversity in Hollywood, both on the screen and in executive suites.
On the other hand, when fingers were pointed at the membership of the Academy
as the cause of the problem, I bristled at the implications.

To my mind, the lack of diverse nominations is a symptom,
not the cause, of the problem. So when the Academy quickly moved to change its
membership rules in response to the controversy, I was both proud and
disappointed — proud of the organization for taking action, any action, that
could alleviate even a small part of the problem, but disappointed that once
the new rules were fully revealed, it became clear that there would be little,
if any, impact on the desired results.

The question for me is, what actions can an organization
like the Academy take to increase diversity when they have no control over the
process by which people are hired, films are green-lit, and movies are marketed?
After reading all the various #OscarsSoWhite articles over the last few weeks
and digesting a multitude of opinions, I’ve come up some concrete suggestions
that may not change Hollywood overnight, but might incentivize the industry to
try much harder.

READ MORE: “The Academy’s Diversity Problem is Not Going Away” 

1. Create new categories that will encourage
, such as Best First Feature, Best Breakthrough Performances (male and
female), and Best Ensemble Cast. These and other categories are already used by
other organizations. And if one looks at those results, it definitely allows
for the embrace of younger artists and a wider net. It might also incentivize
the industry to create more films that could qualify for these categories. I
understand the inherent risk of “ghettoizing” these films, but no more so than
is true of Best Animated Film or Best Documentary, for that matter.

2. Automatically offer Academy Membership to
everyone who gets nominated in the above categories.
That should jumpstart the
membership diversity effort. It would certainly get some younger members.

3. In order to make up for the additional
categories, give out technical awards prior to the telecast
just show quick highlights at some point during the show. They do this on other
awards shows and it works just fine. It might have the additional benefit of
allowing winners to finish their speeches.

4. If promoting diversity in Hollywood is a goal of
the Academy, create a yearly honorary award to reward someone who has done just
This year’s award could have been given to Donna Langley for the
incredibly diverse and successful slate she put together at Universal. This
sort of achievement needs to be feted — perhaps at the Governor’s Awards, along with other honorary awards — so that the studios understand
that diversity and box office are not mutually exclusive. An annual award could
motivate others to do the same.

5. Change the way the Oscar votes are counted. The
current byzantine system of “preferential ballots” may sound good on paper, but
seems to have the unintended result of favoring safe, middle-brow choices. If
members are asked to rank their top five or top ten films, give all of their
choices graduated points and tally those points up. With the current system,
even if every single voter were to list a particular film in third place on his/her
ballot, that film could conceivably not get nominated. That’s very strange, and
certainly cuts out possible nominees that might make the selection more

6. Do not allow anyone to vote in the nomination
process unless they confirm that they have seen a certain percentage of the
eligible films.
And in the final round, do not let anyone vote
in any category unless they’ve seen ALL the nominees. This can be done on the
honor system, much like the way the British Academy does it. When a member logs
in to vote for the BAFTA awards, it offers up a list of all the eligible films
and asks you to check off the ones you’ve seen. Then it only allows you to vote
in the categories where you’ve seen all the films. Obviously, if someone wishes
to cheat, they can. But I guarantee that, faced with the question directly, the
vast majority of Academy members would do the right thing.

7. The Academy has to do something to reign in the
rampant campaigning that has been distorting the process.
So much money and
glad-handing is thrown at winning Oscars that it has become a self-perpetuating
process, which promotes the most obvious, clichéd, middle-brow movies to the fore,
at the expense of the films that would increase diversity. For starters, how
about making Academy members sign a pledge that they won’t participate in Q&As,
dinners, and other events that are clearly meant to sell Academy members on
voting for their films? We are already told that it’s against the rules to
solicit votes directly. This could be the next step.

8. Finally, something needs to be done about the
prognostication by the press
, which ludicrously begins projecting the odds of
Oscar nominations before anyone has seen the films in potential contention.
This “sport” only succeeds in giving enormous power to publicists who start
whispering the attributes of their clients’ films long before they are
released. When the press says that “Straight Out of Compton” doesn’t have a
chance, it’s no wonder that many Academy members don’t bother to see the film.
I have no solution to offer, but this needs to be dealt with.

I believe that if these steps are put into place, the Academy can have
some (perhaps small) impact on the industry as a whole — which is a lot better
than taking the heat for an unacceptable and frankly unfathomable institutional
issue that it really has no control over.    


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