The 2024 Oscars on Sunday will feature a Best Picture category replete with nominations that met diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring standards in its cast and staff.
In order to qualify for the nomination, each film must meet a requirement of a diversity ratio among its hires in at least four categories: onscreen, offscreen, training programs, and marketing. For example, the film Oppenheimer, with its primarily white cast still qualified by meeting the standard in the other categories.
Meanwhile, other films more transparently made the mark with more public showings of their diversity hiring. Barbie, for example, was directed by a woman and featured a cast of almost entirely women while also featuring a variety of races among the cast. Killers of the Flower Moon had a cast of Native American actors, and Past Lives had Korean actors cast in the film.
Actor Richard Dreyfuss, known for his role in Jaws and, most recently, Murder at Yellowstone City, came out against the standards when they were announced last May.
“They make me vomit,” Dreyfuss said at the time. “Because this is an art form, it’s also a form of commerce, and it makes money, but it’s an art. And no one should be telling me, as an artist, that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is.”
However, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has still come under fire for its DEI standards, as it does not include Jewish performers or employees in its scoring method. Last month, almost 300 celebrities signed an open letter to the Academy to demand that Jewish people count toward the standards. Actors Tiffany Haddish, Josh Gad, David Schwimmer, Iliza Shlesinger, and Mayim Bialik, among others, signed the letter.
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“While we applaud the Academy’s efforts to increase diverse and authentic storytelling, an inclusion effort that excludes Jews is both steeped in and misunderstands antisemitism,” the letter read. “The absence of Jews from ‘under-represented’ groupings implies that Jews are over-represented in films, which is simply untrue.”
Sunday’s award show will be the first since the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists ended its longest strike in history at 118 days last summer. The Writers Guild of America similarly was on strike for 148 days.
