Oscars Overhaul

Yeah, I should've gone for "lol the guy who picked The Birth of a Nation as his favourite movie wants to go off about gauging excellence and credibility" (which I admit is technically an ad hominem, hence why I went for the two-word meme instead).

Okay, I'll be serious now. I see a question like "Why don't they pick the best people to win?" and am prompted to ask "How do you know they didn't?", a question that I don't necessarily think you can answer objectively regardless of which side of the argument you're on. It's the Academy. They've made all kinds of questionable choices over the years all across both artistic and ideological spectra and this particular choice ultimately seems kind of minor - if we're already getting eight or nine nominees a year anyway then jacking it up to ten doesn't seem like that much of a stretch (and it still remains to be seen if this will actually have the intended effect of acknowledging quote-unquote diversity or just end up going to whichever above-average blockbuster the Academy wants to acknowledge in lieu of having a "popular film" category).

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I'm not sure how "That would have been an ad hominem so I went for a meme instead" is an explanation, since those aren't your only two options. I'm also not sure I understand what force that ad hominem would have, anyway,, since everybody agrees The Birth of a Nation is technically brilliant and a seminal achievement in film, abhorrent politics aside. In fact it seems totally consistent with the distinction they're drawing between technical or artistic merit and social usefulness.

So yeah, basically I can't make sense of the reply or this supposed defense of it, on any level.

I think he's talking about the diversity panel (or whatever it's called) and not the Best Picture expansion.

I don't know, considering how much GulfportDoc likes to complain about "the SJWs"...let's just say it gives me pause.

Anyway, it was my understanding that the Best Picture expansion and the diversity protocols were interlinked - now I see that they are mutually exclusive concerns that could potentially (but not necessarily overlap).

Is vice signaling a thing? Anyway, while this is occasionally understandable, it seems like all downside, to me. When we go past what people actually say/argue and allow ourselves to dismiss things based on their imagined insidious motives rather than their stated ones, I don't think that's a spiral we can easily pull out of. Too tempting to go there when things get tough or nuanced.

Much better habit, I think, to always assume the best and make ourselves argue with that ("steel manning," they call it), and if we manage to miss an opportunity to be sarcastic to a bigot a few times, big whoop.

Yeah, I guess we'll see what it looks like in practice. Mostly I just don't think the Oscars needed more layers of abstraction or subjective criteria than they already had.

One area where the two "sides" on these issues should be able to meet is that a lot of these problems are long-term, systemic things well upstream of these little band-aid fixes which are covering the symptoms and not treating the problems.

When you say the guy who picked The Birth of a Nation as his favourite, are you referring to me?

Weird question, since you haven't, and since the person immediately before his earlier reply has it has their #1 film.

Investigate questions at least a tiny bit before asking them, dude.

Oh sorry, but none of the previous user's posts before Iroquois's post mentioned that that was their favorite movie though, and I looked throughout the previous posts.

But I guess you mean the user's profile. It didn't occur to me that favorite movies of users were on their profile. Thanks.

Well, you managed not to exclude yourself despite that being true, so I'm not sure why that would exclude everyone else. Particularly when he said "favorite," so even a little thinking and poking around would've yielded an answer pretty quickly.

Okay I will try to think of that next time.

Ok boomer.
*runs away from Yoda’s wrath*