The more Hollywood goes woke, the further Oscars’ ratings fall

March 28, 2022

By Ella Carroll-Smith

There seems to be a directly inverse correlation between the rise of Hollywood’s woke priorities and the fall of its Oscars’ TV ratings. Of course there are other factors to consider, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but the ratings began to slide prior to the beginning of the pandemic. The drop in ratings has been so substantial that even Hollywood insiders and trade magazines are wondering if the Oscars are over altogether.

Oscars’ TV ratings have fallen from a 2014 peak of 43.7 million to a paltry 10.4 million in 2021. So what’s driving the steep decline? LA Magazine posits that the primary culprit could be Aperture 25, which is a diversity initiative that changes the eligibility requirements for Best Picture nominees. From LA Mag: 

“Starting in 2024, producers will be required to submit a summation of the race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status of members of their movie’s cast and crew. If a particular movie does not have enough people of color or disabled people or gays or lesbians working on the set — and what is “enough” will be determined by a knotty tangle of byzantine formularies — then that movie will no longer be eligible for an Oscar.”

What’s most interesting about this Aperture 2025 initiative is that many Hollywood actors, producers, and directors — the very same people who lecture Americans about how terrible they are every awards season — are against the diversity initiatives, claiming they’re “invasive” and invite a slew of privacy issues. What if someone doesn’t want to disclose their sexual orientation or disability status? Is the Academy really willing to violate privacy laws for the sake of so-called diversity?

This hones in on another of the Academy’s issues: the films they nominate and aggrandize are not the same films that the general public typically enjoys. Take the 2021 Best Picture category for example. How many of the nominees have you heard of? Many people wondered how a little-known Japanese film like “Drive My Car,” which garnered only $11 million at the box office, could get nominated over much-beloved films like “Spiderman: No Way Home”, which raked in $1.88 billion. This glaring disparity is evidence of the growing divide between Hollywood’s priorities and the priorities of the audience it is supposed to cater to. 

The wider the rift between Hollywood and its audiences grows, the further the Oscars’ ratings will fall. Regular people don’t want to be lectured for hours on end by some of the richest and most powerful people in America. This is especially true when you consider that many of Hollywood’s biggest studios, such as Disney, cater to genocidal regimes like China on a regular basis. 

How can Disney claim to care about equity and diversity when they do business with a country that keeps religious and ethnic minorities in concentration camps? Hollywood has no moral high ground to stand on here and audiences know it — that’s why they’re choosing to tune out in droves. 

 

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