The filter during awards season

Last year i noticed that there is a filter comprising of bloggers, film journalists and industry publications that try to influence oscar race by publishing articles in favor of or against movies. One common thing among all of them is that their tastes are similar for the most part. They have fixation for certain directors that they are trying help break into oscar race. They are averse to studio directors trying to make oscar movies. They support minority and female directed movies a little leniently. Any movie that doesnt pass through this filter will face severe backlash for no reason.

They don't like movies like the martian where jokes are used for levity and they want art house movies. Luckily hollywood has not been influenced by these nobodies and they make their own choices while voting for oscars. But I think these people are trying to ruin the legacy of movies that get nominated. They are mostly triggered by metoo and timesup and oscarsowhite movements and somehow try to oppose movies that are not in line with this beliefs irrespective of how inventive or good the movies are.

Thoughts on these weird group of people most of whom have very odd jobs and are odd people. Do you think they are insignificant ? because if you look up some of these people they are nothing more than trolls with websites of their own.

Isn't that just what critics do, though? They're expressing opinions and conducting critical analysis on films - how does publishing their work automatically indicate that they are primarily interested in influencing Oscar voters?

If you're someone who appreciates film as an art form (especially as a professional working in that field), you're obviously going to want to encourage anyone and anything that will improve and expand upon the art of filmmaking (and criticise anyone whose output is stagnant or even regressive). If this manifests as supporting minority filmmakers, that's probably because their perspectives are underrepresented in the film industry and giving them the chance to tell different stories is the kind of diversity that makes films more likely to be interesting.

A film like, say, Green Book doesn't face backlash "for no reason", it does so because of its patronising and ineffectual approach to dramatising race relations that not only makes it a weak film in its own right but also makes it hard to champion when considering the state of real-life race relations. Critics are able to give their reasons for why they don't like particular films - you can disagree with their reasons, but to act like they don't exist at all just comes across as ignorant.

Considering that arthouse movies are more likely to provide distinct filmgoing experiences than a high-concept blockbuster like "Cast Away in space", I can understand that.

I would bring up how the Academy took steps to change things up in the wake of #OscarsSoWhite by diversifying their members but then I saw which films won big at this year's awards and now I'm not so sure.

You mean beliefs like "don't sexually assault people" and "don't tolerate racism"? Those aren't exactly the kind of beliefs you can be all agree-to-disagree about, much less completely disregard in the context of the film that's "inventive or good" (and the latter is always a debatable quality anyway). The Birth of a Nation may be a remarkable technical accomplishment in terms of film history but it's also a film where the Ku Klux Klan are depicted as unambiguously heroic figures and was racist enough that even people from back in 1915 were protesting it. As a result, it has a fundamentally complicated legacy where its importance is ultimately compromised by its controversial nature. That's just how it is with films sometimes - none of them are perfect and a good portion of our thinking about film is based in considering the ways in which they are imperfect.

I think that writing them off as weird trolls who do stuff for no reason other than to push some vague agenda involving awards season is a very narrow-minded way of looking at them that says more about you than it does about them.

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...which is why it should be obvious that's not the point of disagreement. Obviously there are implications and connotations (not "x is bad" but "x is bad and we need to do y and z to fix it") to all this beyond the totally unobjectionable, inarguable motte-and-bailey summaries you've put in quotes above. I know you understand this distinction, yet it's always absent from the opening salvo of these interactions.

With #OscarsSoWhite, in particular, I've attempted to engage a few times, but I can't get a response to even the most basic and reasonable rebuttals. Here's one such post, from 2016. Here's one from this year, which I asked for a reply to again here, which you responded to by saying you were tired because it was 2:00 AM. I doubt it's been 2:00 AM for the last five months.

Whenever I bother to present you with reasonable responses, I just get ghosted. I even get ghosted when I point out I'm being ghosted. And yet the original arguments crop up again months later, every time, unaltered and undiluted by the previous interaction.

I mostly agree, maybe, but I think it's hard to say without knowing just what they're talking about. The OP is being very vague.

For example, if they're talking about thoughtful writing of complicated issues, the OP is personalizing things a bit much. If they're talking about those hacky, clickbaity, zeitgeisty editorials like "Actually, X is Awful" that permeate the discourse and people share without even reading (let alone investigating the other side of), then the complaint is well-founded, because those are crappy and lame almost as a rule. I don't think they're leading cultural indicators, though; they're usually trailing cultural indicators, written and posted to reflect some cultural shift, rather than really helping to cause it (though they pretend to).

It'll probably be 2 a.m. by the time I finish this post, though.

But seriously, I'm not even sure I know what kind of "reasonable response" I can give right now. Every time you bring this particular discussion up, I keep reading and re-reading the earlier responses in question but am never quite sure where to pick up whatever thread I was following (especially on a three-year-old argument). At this point, I'll just concede that this latest quote was an unnecessarily blunt reply to OP making it sound like whatever people they talk about only care about the issues insofar as they are looking for an excuse to tarnish certain films' reputations instead of providing legitimate criticism. If anything, I think this year's Oscars did kind of put a pin in the discussion about #OscarsSoWhite specifically with so many PoC winning awards (e.g. three of the four acting awards), though it was with the caveat that certain wins were for films of questionable quality.

That is a good point, then again there's the question of whether OP actually distinguishes between the two types of writing.

That's interesting, as I'd never heard of such activities before. I have a few questions:

Which Oscar films did 'they' tout as great? And as horrible?

Did 'their' opinions have stated reasons behind them? Or did they just mainly say movie xyz sucks because it's really bad?

Did any of their opinions match the opinions of professional movie reviewers & critics that work for mainstream publications? Or were they small fry bloggers?

About how many were there? 100s of bloggers doing what you claim? 1000s? or just a small number like a dozen?

I mean, the first thing I linked to is three years old. I'm nothing if not patient. I'm not saying "NOW!" I'm saying "...ever?"

I really don't see how this could possibly be the explanation. I go pretty far out of my way to try to distill this stuff into the most crucial point and/or statistic, and I was particularly specific and narrowly-focused with the #OscarsSoWhite stuff. And I think it's obvious that in whatever rare case I don't, I'm more than happy to summarize or pick one particularly salient issue to move things along, if there's any indication it will. I think it's clear, by now, that there's just not as much enthusiasm for engaging with the tougher stuff as there is for swatting down the same surface-level stuff over and over.

I think that's sort of inadvertently making the point for a lot of people on the other side of the issue, but personally I'm more concerned with whether it was well-founded to begin with, per the seemingly incompatibility of the claim with the numbers about nominees first provided years ago.

Yeah, I'm not sure. Their lack of precision is definitely making it difficult to respond meaningfully. And even though we're not generally on the same side of these cultural debates, I still have to roll my eyes when someone launches another cultural broadside. Not because they're necessarily wrong on this point or that point, but because they're not making individual or specific points at all. It's just a vague "I AM NOT PLEASED WITH THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF THESE THINGS, COLLECTIVELY." Which should be an impetus to drill down on the specifics of that displeasure and form a coherent and thoughtful critique, but usually just comes out as general, non-specific dissatisfaction, which doesn't help anything.

You may have noticed that there's not as much enthusiasm for any of my posting over the past few years anyway. No more reviews, no more Movie Tab, (almost) no more multi-paragraph responses like this. Not much of an explanation, but these kinds of posts tend to take a certain type of energy that I usually use elsewhere these days.

Perhaps it's less about the numbers and more about the Oscars themselves as an ever-changing cultural touchstone that acknowledges the "best" art and (by extension) which art best reflects the life and time in which it was made, hence why people are inclined to draw their own conclusions about the culture and the people who influence it (and are influenced by it) from each year's winners and nominees. While there's no way of knowing how deliberate it was (if at all), having two consecutive years of all-white acting nominees did come across as the beginning of an unfortunate trend (what if they'd made it to three or four?) so #OscarsSoWhite began in order to draw attention to it and question why the choices were starting to stagnate like this (to say nothing of how said nominations were going to the usual pieces of milquetoast Oscar-bait like The Imitation Game so there was also the question of whether the films in question were really the best that could be nominated). Even the numbers bring up the question of how to maintain that same "10% nominees/10% population" balance without having to nominate more black actors in order to compensate for the absence of them in those two years. Assuming that keeping that balance is what matters, it makes sense to draw attention to a factor that has the potential to unbalance it.

Judging by OP's other posts/threads, that seems to be their general approach. I'd also rather a thread opener didn't end in a question if the OP wasn't genuinely interested in acknowledging answers.

Nice post, aronisred. Your overall points have hit the spot, judging by the immediate hostile attack from the doctrinaire SJ types.

I don't know that much about the group of bloggers you referred to, but many industry reviewers and trades are in the main in lock step with the SJ crowds to which you referred. Their aim is not chiefly to favor entertainment or engagement in meaningful art, but to try to sway public opinion towards their distorted notions of what society should look like; that their esoteric cultish beliefs are natural and desirable.

I enjoyed your skepticism. It's nice to know that some are paying attention..

~Doc

I think if you can find the enthusiasm for the Sisyphean cycle of slapping down the same opening arguments over and over, you can/should find the enthusiasm to have real discussions that progress a little beyond that, at least every now and then.

And I'm not sure energy explains the fact that the arguments don't change. It may require energy to respond to a counterargument, but it shouldn't require any to absorb it and account for it in some small way, even, the next time you discuss an issue. If anything, I imagine it takes more energy to hear a point, not be sure how to answer it, and yet somehow maintain the cognitive dissonance of not changing your view at all.

I honestly don't understand what this means or how it's meant to dispute the relevancy of those numbers. And, to be blunt, "it's less about the numbers" sure sounds like you're making your position unfalsifiable. Which is kind of a red flag.

As far as I can tell this entire paragraph hinges on the phrase "come across as." But I'm not asking you to play political pundit here. You're not a pollster analyzing what "people will think." The question is: is it reasonable if it comes across that way? Seems like it wasn't, given what I've pointed out since. The mere fact that it DID or COULD "come across" some way to people--people who didn't care to inform themselves much before drawing damning conclusions--isn't really a defense of anything in and of itself.

I hate to keep saying "motte and bailey," but I hate more the fact that I keep having to, because it's so clearly and so frequently applicable. This is, unfortunately, how most of these things go: start off with some really searing accusation ("Oscars! Maybe racist!"), then fall back on "it's important to talk about this" or "we need to draw attention to this so it doesn't happen" if it turns out some (easily found!) facts don't really jibe with that accusation. Of course, if that were the position from the beginning, there'd be a lot less fervor.

This is even assuming every single area of art and culture needs to reflect aggregate population totals, anyway, which is a really dubious assumption with tons of problems.

Agreed. To be clear, I'm interested in talking about this issue in general and can't avoid raising the previous instances in which it was discussed, but I'm not going to pretend the OP has really extended a genuine invitation to discuss this, and I don't fault anyone for recognizing that and kind of swatting back at it, in a vacuum. I don't bother to write nuanced and thoughtful replies to everything, if I clearly sense it's not going to be met with a similar level of nuance and thoughtfulness.

"If you make these people mad you must have a point" seems like a pretty dangerous/exploitable principle. That's a purely tribal approach to politics, and it seems to be more popular on all sides these days.

Anyway, I'm not a Social Justice type by any stretch of the imagination, and even I find the points conveniently vague and muddled. I think we--and I mean all of us--need to get out oof the habit of thinking arguments are good because we like the general conclusion.

Do you mean this thread?

I would agree with that. My philosophy is that we need a color blind society, not an overly color aware society. These days anybody can make a film, so a movie by a woman or some racial group, etc, should not be taken into account when reviewing the movie. The movie should be reviewed on it's own merits.

That's interesting as just last night I was watching an interview with LeVar Burton about Gene Rodenberry and Star Trek (TV series) and he said the same thing. He was talking about Roddenberry's vision for Star Trek where people in the future had come together to work for the greater good, then he reflected and said he didn't see that happening as today people are so divided into camps that one side will declare a win, if the other side looses.

That seems pretty utopian to me. I don't mind disagreement. I think it's as crucial as it is inevitable. But we need to disagree well, and that means judging things individually on the merits and recognizing that we can agree with people as they make bad arguments (or vice versa).

I mean, look at the Oscars So White thing. A lot of people have no idea if it was fair or true. They got on board because they wanted to signal their general support for being aware of racism, and because they think it's generally a problem, even if it's not a fair accusation in a specific instance. Conservatives should not be doing the same thing, where any disagreement with political correctness gets cheered on even if it's poorly considered, just because they want to signal their general dissatisfaction with the idea.

As has been noted, that kind of "trigger the libs" mentality is all kinds of bad, especially when you're supposedly complaining about industry professionals who care more about pushing politics than honestly assessing art (which would likely involve politics anyway).

You're right, I shouldn't have answered this chucklehead in the first place. And there's not as much cognitive dissonance as you think, a good chunk of the time I spend ages trying to think of a good answer and then eventually forget to answer.

In which case, it's about how it represents the numbers decreasing.

Does that include defending it as coincidence?

You might as well just call the entire hashtag a motte-and-bailey at this rate and save yourself the trouble of typing it out over and over.

You don't say.

I'm genuinely curious about how this works in your head, actually. Here's how stuff like this goes for me:

I hear a counterargument. It is relevant and/or pretty clearly contradicts something I believe. This has to be reconciled somehow. So I either need to demonstrate that it is wrong or incomplete (in which case I generally say so). If I can't, I need a reason it doesn't matter. Whether or not this reason is good, or perhaps sometimes a bit of a rationalization, is always difficult to say. But the one thing that basically never happens is just a shrug where I stop thinking about it without ever having reconciled the contradiction, once I'm aware of it.

What happens on your end? If you think for awhile and don't come up with a reason it's wrong...you just forget, and the belief remains unaltered, and then (apparently) repeated months later?

I don't understand what you mean by this. Can you summarize what you're saying here? Preferably by swapping in specific nouns and stuff for words like "it."

If people defend it as a coincidence immediately, without looking into it, sure. But in that case they might be right for the wrong reasons (the good conclusions/bad arguments distinction I'm making in some of my other posts in this very thread). I'm not sure "coincidence" would be the right word, though, anyway. I don't think it's a "coincidence" when different groups of people (gasp!) have different aggregate interests in (or tolerances for) different things. Kinda seems like admitting this should be intellectually inevitable if you value diversity at all, really.

Anyway, my point is that you can't have it both ways. It can't be something you're positing as a problem, until the evidence seems at odds, at which point we shift into cultural anthropologist mode and talk about how it "comes across" to some people. The question is what's reasonable given the facts and evidence, not what people will think whether it's reasonable or not. And I'm asking you, a specific person, why you think it makes sense. It's kind of a cop-out to start talking not just about what people feel is true (as opposed to what is true), but to talk about other people think at all (as opposed to what you think).

Good idea. #MandB.

But seriously, it's a big problem in online debates these days, in particular, and I think it's an insidious intellectual crutch, in part because most people barely realize they're doing it. But it's pretty clearly on display right now, and in a lot of our discussions. They routinely overreach to start and then fall back on platitudes nobody could really disagree with, but which bear little resemblance to the beginning of the discussion. "Racism exists and is bad" is in no way related to the claim "The Oscars may be practicing systemic racism."

And thinking racism is generally a problem (or even a much bigger problem than a lot of people realize) should not intellectually obligate you to always think racism is present in any area where people have suggested it might be. But that sure seems to be the assumption, given that I can't think of a single contrary example in a decade-plus, and given how often that sentiment is expressed when it clearly hasn't been investigated or interrogated at all.

If you're saying that numbers are an insufficient way to measure cultural impact, cool, welcome to the party. I hope you remember this conclusion the next time someone just cites relative population/representation numbers as de facto evidence of prejudice.

That's a good point, although "dangerous" might be a little hefty, especially in reference to an observation.. But it's true that anger as an objective simply reduces each side to insults and name calling; not useful at all.

Fair, I guess dangerous is a bit strong, at least in the short term. Maybe just potentially dangerous, if unchecked.

So...is this discussion over, too? Is it just going to happen again or is there some kind of agreement that #OscarsSoWhite was a little facile/at odds with the numbers, or...?