Kulturkampf

[benji]

Last fall, an independent filmmaker was filling out an online form to put forward his movie for Oscar consideration when some questions on the Academy’s submissions site caught him off guard. The site asked about his cast and crewmembers’ race, gender and sexual orientations, and had some questions about their health — whether they had autism, for instance, or dealt with chronic pain or mental illness.

“I don’t know, maybe someone on my crew was neurodivergent,” this filmmaker says. “It’s not my place to ask. Did they do their job? Great. And how are we going to know who’s gay when it’s illegal to ask people?”

The questions are part of the Academy’s new representation and inclusion standards for Oscar eligibility (RAISE), which the organization started rolling out in 2021 in preparation for making certain benchmarks mandatory by next year’s awards season. The goal is to spur more inclusive hiring in the film business, but some producers who are trying to comply say the process is cumbersome at best and privacy invading at worst.

“The intention is commendable, but a lot of the questions I felt uncomfortable asking,” says another producer. “I wasn’t going to write to all the actors and ask what their sexual orientation is. And if it’s not something offered up on their bio, are you really going to say, ‘Hey, are you disabled?’ “

Says one studio source, “We want to look supportive of the effort, but legally, we can’t ask a lot of these questions.”

These fucking chuds and their excuses to hurt diversity efforts.

The Academy says that in the second year of the rollout, it has added resources to help with the process, directing production companies to sites like Free the Work and Staff Me Up, which maintain databases of cast and crewmembers who self-identify as being from underrepresented groups. The organization also has made it easier to add information anonymously, in response to concerns about privacy. If a production wants to note that an actor or crewmember has a disability, for example, it can do so without specifically naming that person.

What could go wrong?

The Academy says it is auditing the submissions to confirm that productions are accurately reporting their data. “If we’re seeing some information that feels very off from what we know, we might go back and question the production on the methodology they used,” English says.

Accurately reporting how anonymous people self-identify?