The Acad­e­my Awards have set new diver­si­ty stan­dards, but to what end?

The Acad­e­my of Motion Pic­ture Arts and Sci­ences cur­ried a lot of pub­lic favor when they bestowed their Best Pic­ture prize on crowd-pleas­ing favorite Par­a­site at this year’s Oscars, but they’ve still got plen­ty of face to save. Enter­tain­ment indus­try activists con­tin­ue to take the awards pro­gram to task for a lack of diver­si­ty in their nom­i­nees and the films they nom­i­nate, and now the orga­ni­za­tion appears to take a major step toward rem­e­dy­ing that.

An announce­ment labeled ​“Inclu­sion and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion Stan­dards” lays out a plan to encour­age a wider vari­ety of new voic­es and per­spec­tives in Hol­ly­wood. From now on, any film sub­mit­ted for Acad­e­my eli­gi­bil­i­ty must ful­fill at least two of four cri­te­ria laid out in the inter­est of de-empha­siz­ing hege­monies of race and gen­der both in front of and behind the camera.

The first lit­mus test con­cerns ​“On-Screen Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, Themes, and Nar­ra­tives,” dic­tat­ing that a film must either fea­ture a non­white actor in a lead­ing or ​“sig­nif­i­cant sup­port­ing” role, or that 30 per cent of all actors must be women, non­white, LGBT+, or cognitively/​physically dis­abled, or that the ​“main sto­ry­line” be focused on one of the under­rep­re­sent­ed groups pre­vi­ous­ly listed.

The sec­ond applies these same bench­marks to behind-the-scenes tal­ent, dic­tat­ing that per­son­nel from those groups must head up at least two depart­ments, includ­ing cast­ing, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, score com­pos­ing, cos­tum­ing, direct­ing, edit­ing, hair­styling, make­up, pro­duc­ing, pro­duc­tion design, set dec­o­rat­ing, sound, VFX, or writing.

The third accounts for ​“Indus­try Access and Oppor­tu­ni­ties,” stat­ing that a film’s dis­trib­u­tor or financ­ing com­pa­ny must pro­vide paid intern­ships or appren­tice­ships to mem­bers of the afore­men­tioned mar­gin­al­ized groups, as well as offer­ing train­ing to below-the-line work­ers along the same demo­graph­ic lines. And the fourth cri­te­ri­on extends to ​“Audi­ence Devel­op­ment,” mean­ing that the pre­sid­ing stu­dio or film com­pa­ny must have ​“mul­ti­ple in-house senior exec­u­tives” on the mar­ket­ing, pub­lic­i­ty, and dis­tri­b­u­tion teams from the under-acknowl­edged groups.

That sure sounds like a lot of box­es to tick. In prac­ti­cal terms, how­ev­er, this may not spur all that much change. Let’s con­sid­er some of the films that have drawn heat in recent years for their lack of diver­si­ty, and see just how eas­i­ly this low bar is cleared.

For exam­ple, one might assume that Dunkirk, a film with a cast made up entire­ly of stern-faced white men, would be barred by these new require­ments. How­ev­er, it was pro­duced by human woman Emma Thomas (Christo­pher Nolan​‘s part­ner and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor), and the make­up and hair­styling depart­ments were head­ed by Luisa Abel and Patri­cia DeHaney respectively.

Going through IMDb and inves­ti­gat­ing the racial back­ground of Nolan’s crew is beyond my research capa­bil­i­ties, but suf­fice it to say that it would only take one non-white per­son to put him over the top on the first cri­te­ri­on. Add to that the fact that Thomas also runs the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Syn­copy, and that one Johan­na Fuentes cur­rent­ly sits as the Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent for World­wide Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Pub­lic Affairs at Warn­er Bros, and the movie is good to go.

The point here is that it would take very lit­tle to sat­is­fy these new demands, and that even the most seem­ing­ly sta­tus-quo-sup­port­ing films make the cut. To this same effect, movies with hide­bound racial pol­i­tics that nonethe­less fea­ture Black actors – your Crash­es, your Green Books – have noth­ing to wor­ry about.

While clear­ly a well-intend­ed ges­ture, these new rules leaves a great deal of room for refin­ing and improve­ment. With a seri­ous­ly dimin­ished num­ber of films com­pet­ing for its hon­ors this year, the Oscars will undoubt­ed­ly look dif­fer­ent than they ever have, but the new­ly passed stan­dards will do what they can to steer this new era in a pos­i­tive direction.