It used to be just strongly encouraged, now it’s mandatory: if you want your movie to be considered for an Academy Award (and what director doesn’t?), then it has to be social justice propaganda.
Starting in 2024, no film can be considered for Best Picture unless it satisfies two of the following four criteria (A, B, C & D). This is Standard A:
Either the lead or top supporting actor has to be a minority. If it’s an ensemble cast, 30% have to be either minorities, gay, female or disabled. Or the film itself has to be about “underrepresented people.”
Standard B:
This is similar to Standard A, but it’s for the people on the other side of the camera. The actors and the filmmakers must have Proper Minority Representation™.
Standard C:
You better not have any white interns.
Standard D:
The film’s marketing department must be led by minorities. Hollywood must now be focused on financially uplifiting minorities rather than making good films.
On top of that, all films considered for Best Picture MUST be propaganda now.
I hate to do the comparisons to Nazi Germany because they’re so commonplace and thereby diluted nowadays, but outside of Hitler, one of the most well-known Nazi officials from back then is Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ Minister of Propaganda. He turned the entire German film industry into blatant Nazi propaganda. This is the kind of thing we learn about in America and think, “It could never happen here.”
Well, maybe not. The Academy is literally dictating what movies should be about. If the movie’s message is not about how oppressed minorities are in America, then the Academy wants nothing to do with it.
At some point there will appear another form of award that will make the Academy extinct.
Hopefully we can just move beyond Hollywood altogether. Produce entertainment somewhere else and outside of the Hollywood industrial complex.