In fact, this has been a disconcerting problem with The Academy since forever. Now, in an opinion piece on The Washington Post, legendary author Stephen King (It, Doctor Sleep, The Shining) criticised The Academy. He said: King also went on to talk about how voters have the habit of not watching films in serious contention despite it being their job. He questioned if a majority-white and old voting body would care or understand a nuanced film about the black struggle. It’s better than it was, certainly. Only eight years ago, 94% of the 5,700 voters were white, according to the Los Angeles Times, 77% were male, and 54% were more than 60 years old. This year, women make up 32% of voters (up only 1% from last year) and minority members equal 16% of the total.
The next part of Stephen King’s essay made me bang my table and say “thank you!” like Steve Carell in The Office. You see, every time I write a piece celebrating diversity in films (i.e. MCU to feature more LGBT characters), I get a barrage of comments either from heartless extremists who say “LGBT sucks, you soyboy!” (which is easy to ignore) or people who say, “don’t make movies for the sake of diversity. Just make good movies.” Here’s what Stephen King has to say: Stephen King is absolutely right. In a perfect world, we should be blind in celebration of art. Art transcends all — race, creed, sexuality. In fact, that’s how we should view art right now. When I review a movie, I don’t give bonus points for diversity or give a pass to bad films that are diverse. However, we should always celebrate diversity in films (like when Marvel Studios say they’re going to feature more people of colour or LGBT characters) because, for the longest time, the industry has been systematically rigged against minorities. The pendulum has been swung so far in one direction that we have to swing it back and level the playing field first.
