Why is Parasite nominated for best picture, when it's a foreign film?

That last paragraph I think is key. I'm fine with the argument that people gravitate towards things familiar to them. But I don't see why a foreign film (however you care to define that) would have to be excluded from the main categories. The familiarity argument works as an explanation for why a "foreign" film might not receive attention outside of a foreign sub-category, but it doesn't work as an explanation as to why it shouldn't even be allowed to compete there. If anything, given that tendency towards the familiar, wouldn't it be all the more impressive if it were nominated anyway?

It's the difference between "high school baseball players don't make the majors because they're not fully grown" and "high school baseball players aren't allowed to play in the majors no matter how good they are."

And when I made the OP, I'm not disappointed that the Oscars picked a foreign film at all, I am just surprised that they did.

I think that a lot of awards have issues when it comes to how categories are defined, how different things become eligible or ineligible, and even how the voting works. (Remember when people responsible for voting for Best Picture flat out refused to even watch Brokeback Mountain?)

I honestly don't envy the people who have to decide on the rules for different categories. I have no idea how I would do it or how it could be done in a way that felt fair. The only thing I can think of would be to create more subcategories, but I know that runs the risk of "diluting" the awards if you're giving out like 100 of them. But that said, the decision around Minari seems particularly baffling.

I think that the logic in keeping "foreign" movies out of the major categories is that it will alienate the "general audience". There's already the perception of artistic snobbery in many awards, and people get grumpy when they have never even heard of the film that wins Best Picture. But that's where awards need to decide if their metric is popularity or quality (and some films obviously achieve both). And if the metric is quality, then what the "everyday Joe" is going to say about Parasite winning Best Picture shouldn't matter.

I’m guessing this is ‘Minari’ we’re discussing I haven’t seen that it’s excluded from the oscars or has it just been announced or something.

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We're kind of rolling a few award together, but what started this conversation is that Minari is an American film, made by an American director, starring American actors, but because a significant portion of the film is in Korean (the film is about a Korean family that moves to Arkansas), the Golden Globes put it in the Foreign Film category which makes it ineligible to win Best Picture.

I’ll be honest I don’t watch the golden globes, the oscars is a guilty pleasure but it’s all superficial really. The fact that it is superficial in my opinion means that it will move with the PC culture we’re heading in.*As it has with Parasite, maybe this wouldn’t have won 10 years ago, it did last year so where is the issue?

The reality is ‘Minari’ probably will get nominated for best picture now and not because the quality of the movie but to prevent a riot. Whether it will or not isn’t important in the whole scheme of things.*
Racism is becoming more and more trivial by the day and whether a movie is nominated or not at an awards ceremony is extremely trivial. The word racism being bounded about weakens actual racism that does exist, this is what I don’t agree with.

See this is actually an insidious form of racism. "It's probably not the best movie, but since they used the word 'racism' now it will be nominated'". The film already won the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, along with many other awards for the performances, screenplay, and just "best picture" type of categories. And it has won these awards in both America-based things and international awards. It was of high enough quality that the Golden Globes put it up for what is essentially "best foreign film".

You say it's trivial, but a lot of embedded racism does look trivial. Winning awards gets the names of creators out there and gives them prestige. It can be a significant boost to a career. So excluding people from being eligible for an award based on the language used in a film has the effect of diminishing that creator's standing.

If someone decides not to hire a person based on their race/religion/gender/sexuality/ethnicity, you could say that's trivial, because it's just one person and one job. But it's not trivial to that person. And I'd imagine that being excluded for a major awards category is not trivial to the people who made Minari.

The fact that the film industry has become more diverse and collaborative across nations is something we should be celebrating. Stoker is an awesome film that was directed by a South Korean director, written by a British writer, acted mainly by two Australians and a Brit, and filmed in the USA.

Does it make separating "foreign films" harder? Yeah. But I think it's an overall positive aspect to contemporary cinema.

Well you’ve definitely misquoted me there I haven’t said it’s probably not the best movie, I haven’t seen it for start I never the questioned the quality of the movie. Regardless of quality the chances it will get nominated because the word race has been associated which it. In actual effect this diminishes the movie because it may very well be best picture worthy but a campaign saying it should be entered will force the hand of the academy to enter it and therefore the quality of the movie not being paramount, which is a dangerous road to go down.

The golden globes way of categorising movies may be outdated I’m not sure how their system works but why does this immediately have to open up a race debate, if they were racist there wouldn’t be a foreign language category at all. Embedded racism and insidious racism are terms used to keep whoever is arguing their case shut up and say nothing. Why not just say insidious or embedded point of view? Because as soon as racism is spoken the reply has to be suppressive or that person is fundamentally evil and wrong.

Trivial in the context of the world is what I’m getting at, I’m all for looking at things and potentially changing them for whatever reason that maybe. However using the word racism because a non English speaking movie has been entered into the foreign language category at one particular awards ceremony is not deserving of the word.

Well what I find ironic is that the Oscars feel they are not diverse enough, when they are in fact the most diverse movie awards in the world, aren't they? For example, I don't think other movie awards programs in other countries care about diversity near as much as the U.S. does. Do other movie Academy awards in other countries even have a best foreign language film award usually?

But how come other movies where a good portion of it is in a foreign language are able to be nominated for best picture? For example, a lot of Inglourious Basterds is in German and it was still nominated for best picture.

For starters, at least for the oscars, a film can’t be accepted for foreign film unless it is more then half in what ever language it is meant to be in. Let’s understand that criteria first.

Second, Basterds was released in 2009, well before the recent issues. Simpler times.

You said that it would be nominated irrespective of the quality of the film because now there is talk of racism. I'm pointing out that not only did the Golden Globes themselves judge it to be high quality (because it is nominated in the Foreign category) but many, many other awards have deemed it high enough quality to both nominate and win in major categories.

If you believe that your film has been incorrectly or unfairly categorized, what are you supposed to do except speak up and say, "Hey, we think our film deserves to be eligible for this category and not that category."

There's this flawed idea that the word "racism" is some magic wand that non-white people can use to get whatever they want. And while it might be true that people have tried to use the accusation of racism this way, it seems disingenuous to apply this logic to a film that came into the Golden Globes with plenty of accolades and their anger and not being eligible for the major category seems legit and justified.

Your explanation puts people in an impossible situation. Either accept what they consider a biased decision (and not win the award) or fight against the decision and everyone puts an asterisk next to their name, "Oh, you know why they were really nominated."

It opens a debate for several reasons. The first is the question of why non-English films are ineligible for a best picture award in the first place. It would be one thing if filmmakers had the option to pick one category (ie you can either contend for Best Picture or contend for Foreign Language), but that's not the case. Another is that two films are being cited (Inglorious Basterds and Babel) which, according to an article I'm reading, were given exceptions to the language requirements and allowed to compete for Best Picture.

Part of the issue is that the use of the word "foreign" carries certain connotations. And it's not surprising that people are chafing at the use of the word to describe a film made by Americans, set in America, and literally ABOUT a family assimilating into American culture.

When I hear "foreign film" or "foreign language film", I'm thinking about movies made and set in other countries. It seems very strange to apply that word to Minari. One article talked about how for the Golden Globes (which divide things into Drama or Comedy), their category for foreign language is strange because it just lumps all non-English films together. As the article said, "Language is not a genre."

If there is an embedded racial/ethnic bias in the way that films are categorized in an awards ceremony, why not address that? Racism exists on a very long spectrum ranging from what might be considered "trivial" all the way up to acts of extreme violence. But does that mean there's a certain point along that spectrum that people shouldn't try to make positive changes?

I agree with the creators of the film who say that being put in the "foreign" category sends a message that the film is non-American.

Are we really imagining that if the Minari discussion wasn't happening all the people involved would be out there actively dealing with the school-to-prison pipeline or calling their senators about police reform instead?

What recent issues? Did the Oscars change their criteria on what counts as a foreign langauge film? I can check.

Also, I thought it was the movie companies that determine if a movie was a foreign film or not. Since Minari is made by A24 films and Plan B Entertainment, those are American companies, and would thus make it an American and non-foreign film, or so I thought.

Issues caused from backlash over Parasite winning BP.

Origin of countries decide on whether a film is foreign or not.

The Golden Globes are a little different, because it's technically "foreign language", and that's considered anything with less than 50% English.

I read that with the Oscars, if something was released in the US by a certain date it can qualify to be nominated for Best Picture and not just best Foreign Language Film.

Really I think that the issue is that there needs to be a serious discussion about how and why films are considered "foreign." Especially as the lines between "American" and "foreign" films gets more blurred.

I think that what would be ideal is that production companies would put up their film as either Best Picture OR Best Foreign/International Film (you have to choose and you can't do both). Then the committee would choose their nominees from those lists. That way, a film from Chile that didn't make much of a splash and knows it won't beat the "big dogs" can go for Best Foreign/International. A film like Parasite that is critically acclaimed and did millions of dollars at the American box office can go for Best Picture.

It's more a case of some of the rules/categories feeling outdated. The question of bias comes in if other films have been given exceptions and this one has not.

Oh but I thought the Oscars liked awarding a foreign film as best picture because they wanted to be more diverse, so aren't they proud of that?

Yes, but as Tak mentioned above, this is specifically about the Golden Globes.
I mentioned the oscars, and the backlash, as what likely caused the issue to begin with.

Oh okay, but what backlash was there really since I thought a large amount of people, liked that the Oscars awarded a foreign film best picture? Wouldn't the Golden Globes view it more positively, since a lot of people liked that the Oscars did it?

https://decider.com/2020/02/21/trump...picture-rally/

https://www.insider.com/parasite-osc...navirus-2020-2

(Note the comment in the second article from the guy who says that there were two other films he thought were more deserving, and thus Parasite only won because Hollywood wanted to appear "woke").