“Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings?”: Richard Dreyfuss Makes Fool Out Of Himself, Claims White Actors Should Play Black Roles To Preserve Artistic Integrity
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has updated its diversity and inclusion standards, which have drawn criticism from Oscar-winning actor, Richard Dreyfuss. The 75-year-old actor claimed that they “make me vomit“.
According to the new regulations, movies must adhere to minimum standards for inclusion and representation to be eligible for the best picture award. Starting in 2024, movies that don’t have enough black, gay, and disabled actors in the cast and crew won’t be eligible for the Best Picture award.
But the Jaws actor attacked the new rules in a PBS episode of Firing Line with Margaret Hoover that aired on Friday. The actor believed that Academy was treating people like children by enforcing the new standards.
The initiative, which was first announced in 2020, mandated that nominees for Best Picture must adhere to certain requirements.
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Richard Dreyfuss Slammed The Academy’s Diversity Efforts
Richard Dreyfuss, who won his first Oscar for The Goodbye Girl in 1978, criticized the academy for its diversity initiatives in an interview for PBS’ Firing Line with Margaret Hoover.
The actor made his remarks during a lengthy interview, in which he also spoke about partisan discourse, the Academy’s diversity inclusion initiative, and civics education in the United States.
Dreyfuss said to Hoover, “They make me vomit.”
In the midst of social unrest in 2020, the academy declared that it would work to improve representation in the organization’s leadership, membership, workplace environment, and Oscar-nominated movies. Beginning with the 2024 Oscars, films that are nominated must adhere to a number of diversity-related requirements that the academy has outlined.
A movie must meet at least two requirements from each of the four categories—”Onscreen Representation, Themes and Narratives, Creative Leadership and Project Team, Industry Access and Opportunities, and Audience Development”—in order to be considered for the best picture.
There are different standards for the inclusion of members of underrepresented groups, such as women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and those with physical or mental impairments, within each category. These requirements won’t apply to other Oscar categories.
He Claimed White Actors Should Play Black Roles To Maintain Artistic Integrity
The rule change will be put into effect years after the annual awards ceremony, which was the center of the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite controversy. The ruling body came under fire for failing to recognize Black and other artists of color. Richard Dreyfuss argued:
“No one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give into the latest, most current idea of what morality is.”
He further added:
“And what are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. And you have to let life be life. I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s a minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”
Dreyfuss objected to the academy’s initiatives and cited the blackface performance by white English actor, Laurence Olivier, in the 1965 film Othello, for which he had received an Oscar nomination.
Dreyfuss, who is also white, questioned,
“Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man? Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish, they shouldn’t play the Merchant of Venice?”
The efforts, according to Dreyfuss, undermine acting and filmmaking as arts and imply that “we’re so fragile that we can’t have our feelings hurt.”
Well, The Goodbye Girl actor may not like the new diversity requirements for the Oscars, but the annual awards ceremony has already noticed a slow but steady shift in the honorees.
Source- Firing Line with Margaret Hoover
