Abolish the Oscar DEI Test

What the gate actually tests

Standard A has three routes. A1 requires at least one lead or significant supporting actor submitted for Oscar consideration from a racial or ethnic group underrepresented in the country or territory of production. A2 requires at least 30 percent of all actors not submitted for Oscar consideration to come from at least two underrepresented groups. A3 requires the main storyline, theme or narrative to centre on an underrepresented group.

Standard B also has three routes. B1 requires two distinct creative leaders or department heads from underrepresented groups, including at least one person from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. B2 requires six distinct other crew, team or technical personnel—excluding production assistants—from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. B3 requires at least 30 percent of the crew to come from at least two underrepresented groups.

Standard C is met through C1 or C2. C1 covers paid apprenticeships or internships maintained by the film's distribution or financing company. C2 covers below-the-line training or work opportunities offered by a production, distribution or financing company; the public C2 criterion states no explicit minimum headcount, duration, completion, placement outcome or pay requirement.

Standard D requires at least two distinct in-house senior executives or hired consultants who collectively belong to at least two underrepresented groups, including at least one person from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. They must work on creative or development, marketing, publicity or distribution teams.

A contender needs any two standards. That single design choice separates the compliance result from the artistic work.

The C-plus-D escape route breaks the artistic link

RAISE permits a picture that fails both on-screen Standard A and production Standard B to clear the gate through C plus D: one qualifying company-access route, plus qualifying executives or consultants. Neither route measures the finished film. The picture can qualify without changing one character, theme, leading performance, department head or crew percentage.

That is not a narrow exception hidden in a footnote. It is the architecture of the rule. The Academy's answer—that a film can qualify off screen—concedes the case against RAISE. If the test can be satisfied without changing the picture or the people who made it, the test is unrelated to the merit the prize is supposed to recognize.

At best, C and D are corporate-employment indicators. Attaching them to Best Picture is a category error. A rule detached from the prize has no place in eligibility.

Standard C was weakened; Standard D's eligible pool broadened

In September 2020, Standard C required a company to meet both C1, paid apprenticeships or internships, and C2, training or skills-development opportunities. The current rule requires only one. That is an unequivocal loosening.

Standard D now counts hired consultants and creative or development teams as well as in-house executives in marketing, publicity and distribution. The current D rule also expressly requires the qualifying people to span at least two underrepresented groups and include at least one person from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.

The precise charge is serious enough: C was weakened, while D's eligible pool was broadened. The Academy made its corporate bypass more flexible after announcing the standards as a catalyst for change.

The corporate advantage is built in

The Academy recognizes a difference between majors and smaller companies. Major studios and distributors are expected to operate substantive, ongoing paid programs across many departments. Mini-majors and independents can satisfy C1 with at least two qualifying apprentices or interns, including at least one person from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, in at least one listed department.

The published criterion is company-level: it asks whether the distributor or financier has the program, not whether that program changed this film. It does not require the program to be new or film-specific. Company infrastructure therefore becomes an eligibility input without proving anything about Best Picture merit.

Whether an independent can qualify another way is beside the point. Best Picture admission should never turn on the human-resources infrastructure or consultant roster of the company behind a film. An artistic prize should not become easier to enter because the distributor has a better compliance department.

Confidentiality protects data—and defeats accountability

Personal identity data can remain private; eligibility outcomes and reasoning need not. The Academy publishes neither the two standards each contender used nor whether a title qualified through cast, crew, a training program, its distributor or hired consultants.

Internal checking cannot substitute for public accountability when secret demographic information helps decide admission to the Academy's top prize. The public sees the consequence but not the proof.

RAISE therefore creates a closed compliance system: the Academy writes the test, receives the confidential filing, resolves eligibility and publishes no film-level route. An artistic prize should not demand trust in an identity audit it refuses to expose.

RAISE imposes a quota-suspicion tax

Once the Academy declares demographic characteristics relevant to eligibility, every conspicuous casting choice can be recast as an awards calculation. Audiences see a performer; they cannot see a confidential C-plus-D filing. The vacuum fills with speculation: Was the actor the director's first choice? Was the story altered for the Academy? Was a role offered to clear a threshold?

Those questions may be unfair. That is exactly the harm. The Academy has placed an official compliance incentive in the background while refusing to disclose whether it mattered in a particular case. The rule gives culture-war claims an institutionally plausible premise and gives the public no film-level evidence with which to test it.

RAISE does not protect the legitimacy of diverse casting; it burdens it. Once demographics become an eligibility variable and the filing stays secret, performers can be treated as suspected compliance instruments. That stigma is created by the rule, not by the performers. Abolish the rule and judge the performance.

Snow White: when corporate identity politics became the story

Disney's 2025 Snow White grossed $205.679 million worldwide and fell 66 percent in its second domestic weekend. Forbes, using the latest UK accounts of Disney production vehicle Hidden Heart Productions, reported $336.5 million in cumulative production spending before $64.9 million in UK reimbursement, or $271.6 million net. The filings do not disclose every title-level revenue and cost line, so any ultimate studio-loss figure must remain attributed. But worldwide ticket sales were about $65.9 million below even net production spend—and exhibitors retained part of those ticket sales.

The release arrived after delays, expensive production, arguments over changes to the original, criticism of the digital characters, politically polarizing remarks and competing boycott calls. Disney then restricted access at the Hollywood premiere. Variety reported that the red carpet would not include the usual dozens of outlets interviewing cast and creatives; coverage was limited to photographers and a house crew. The studio's restriction of normal premiere interviews showed a publicity operation trying to contain the story surrounding its own film.

Disney had approved a public reinvention of a foundational brand, but near release it limited unscripted questions around the people expected to explain that reinvention. The company had turned the film into an ideological argument and then failed to sell either the argument or the entertainment.

The Odyssey: RAISE makes sincere casting look like compliance

The trailer frame above shows an airborne fighter crossing a smoke-filled forest while armoured combat continues below. It is reproduced for that exact visual record: the image displays performance, staging, costume, atmosphere and physical screen action—the creative work an artistic prize can judge directly, unlike a confidential demographic filing.

Before release, Elon Musk publicly claimed that Nolan cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen because “he wants the awards,” Variety reported. He supplied no evidence of Nolan's motive. RAISE does not require on-screen compliance: C plus D can qualify a film without Standard A. The existence of a diverse cast therefore cannot establish an Academy motive.

STUNT.BLOG found no published evidence that Nolan cast the film to satisfy RAISE, and the Academy's confidential process makes the accusation impossible to test at film level.

That is not a defence of the rule. It is an indictment. RAISE gives quota speculation an institutional basis and leaves artists and performers to rebut it without access to the filing that created the suspicion.

Nolan's answer—“All I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way”—states the principle the Academy abandoned when it made demographics an eligibility variable.

Universal reported a $264.1 million worldwide opening, including $124.5 million in the United States and Canada. Reuters reported an A CinemaScore, a 97 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience rating at the time and that half of North American ticket buyers chose an enhanced format, including 23 percent IMAX. Our separate IMAX analysis examines that format choice. The success belongs to the film and its execution, not to RAISE.

RAISE neither caused the result nor deserves credit for it. It merely attached a secret compliance theory to public creative choices. If the work succeeds, the form adds nothing. If the work fails, the form saves nothing.

The rule is intrusive and ineffective

Richard Dreyfuss attacked the intrusion on artistic independence. Spike Lee, from a radically different position, identified loopholes and the unchanged power of gatekeepers.

Their political disagreement does not save RAISE. It exposes the same structural failure from opposite directions: the rule is coercive enough to politicize eligibility and weak enough to leave institutional power untouched.

A rule condemned for both intrusion and ineffectiveness should not be tuned. It should be abolished.

The remedy is abolition

Remove Standards A through D from Best Picture eligibility before the next awards cycle. Do not replace them with another demographic certification. Publishing each film's compliance route would make RAISE less secret but no more legitimate. A public demographic entrance test is still a demographic entrance test.

The Academy's coming Stunt Design award states the proper principle: define a craft contribution and judge the work placed on screen. The difficult questions concern authorship, design, execution and responsibility—not whether a distributor can supply a consultant.

STUNT.BLOG is published within the SlamArtist.com Universe, which includes a connected first-party Stunt Design practice area. That relationship is disclosed for context; it is not independent evidence for this opinion.

Best Picture should mean best picture

RAISE is not a defective version of a sound eligibility principle. It is the wrong principle for an artistic prize. It makes identity an official eligibility variable, lets corporate machinery bypass the film, hides the qualifying route and places sincere casting under permanent suspicion.

The Academy should abolish RAISE before the next cycle and reject any renamed substitute. Stories should be chosen by filmmakers, performances judged as performances and films judged by Academy members on their creative merits.

Abolish the gate. Best Picture should mean best picture.