After the Oscar nominations came out on Monday, they were criticized, as is common, for being too white and too male.
Some of the criticisms did have a point, but I’ll get back to that.
In order to defend the nominees in the three categories that Stephen King had a hand in determining, King tweeted an explanation on Tuesday.
“As a writer, I am allowed to nominate in just 3 categories: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay. For me, the diversity issue — as it applies to individual actors and directors, anyway — did not come up. That said,” he explained, “I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.”
…I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) January 14, 2020
King, of course, was right. But, of course, he was quickly lambasted for being narrow-minded.
“As a fan, this is painful to read from you,” writer Roxane Gay tweeted. “It implies that diversity and quality cannot be synonymous. They are not separate things. Quality is everywhere, but most industries only believe in quality from one demographic. And now, here you are.”
Like J.K. Rowling, King is in hot water for daring to defy liberal orthodoxy. That being said, King’s follow-up tweets added an important bit of nuance to his position.
“The most important thing we can do as artists and creative people is make sure everyone has the same fair shot, regardless of sex, color, or orientation,” he said. “Right now, such people are badly underrepresented, and not only in the arts.”
Finally, he added, “You can’t win awards if you’re shut out of the game.”
Conservatives too often see “diversity” as liberal term, just as liberals see appeals to “quality” as attempts to mask sexism or racism. King was right at the beginning, but he was also right when he clarified that some types of stories are not well represented. Speaking of which, let’s get back to the valid criticisms against the Oscar nominees.
This year, some excellent films failed to nab even a single nomination, from Jordan Peele’s Us to The Farewell. Us, in particular, deserved some recognition for becoming one of 2019’s highest-grossing films despite not being a sequel or part of a franchise. Jennifer Lopez, who generated Oscar buzz for her charismatic and nuanced role in Hustlers, didn’t get a nomination either.
In short, King was right from start to finish. No, you should never award art for some obscure diversity metric while letting excellence fall by the wayside. But it’s also true that some great films made by and featuring women and nonwhite people — Us, The Farewell, etc. — were shut out of this year’s Oscar nominations.
If you’ve grown up seeing certain types of films rewarded as great art, you’ll be less likely to consider different types of storylines when it’s time to dish out awards. If our society wants to award great art in all its forms, we must seek quality while asking ourselves what we mean when we speak of “quality” in the first place. Does it apply only to stories that we’re familiar with, that make us feel comfortable? Or are we looking for new, creative expressions? Let’s hope it’s the latter.
