Conservative author Mark Steyn said Thursday that new diversity and inclusion rulings announced for the Academy Awards are part of “the death of art.”
“This is the death of art. This is art by quota, and there is no future in it,” Steyn told Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
The author insisted that “creativity depends on the truth. And actually creativity is in decline over the last 100 years,” adding that most successful contemporary films are based on comic books created in the early 1960s. “We’re dead creatively.” (RELATED: Mark Steyn: ‘We Live In An Age Of Super Elites,’ Led By ‘The March Of The Morons’)
Steyn noted that liberal democracies used to ridicule communist states for insisting that art be subservient to ideology, resulting in theatre and films that were bereft of real characters and believable storylines.
“It played about as well as it sounded and we made jokes about the communists for doing that, all the way through to the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
Steyn quipped that it would be difficult to make an Oscar winning film about the New Afrikan Black Panther movement because of racial makeup of the group.
“I would quite interested in making a film about them, but you couldn’t under these rules, because at least 30% of the secondary roles would have to be black, and as we’ve just seen, the new Afrikan Black Panther movement is entirely white, so that film could never get made in today’s Hollywood.” (RELATED: Pelosi Taking ‘Contempt For The Citizenry To Whole New Level,’ Mark Steyn Tells Tucker Carlson)
Steyn said all artists “need to wake up” because in the crosshairs and they don’t have five to 10 years to turn this thing around. “If you don’t want to be doing the socialist department store operetta, you guys have got to speak up now because this is the death of art.”
Renee Zellweger reacts with her Oscar for Best Actress in “Judy” in the photo room during the 92nd Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 9, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
The inclusion ruling means that any film hoping to be nominated for a best picture Oscar must present a lead actor from an “underrepresented racial or ethnic group.”
The film could also ensure that 30% of all actors in lesser roles be women, members of the LGBTQ community, an underrepresented racial group or people with cognitive or physical disabilities.
In 2015, Rev. Al Sharpton called for an emergency diversity task force meeting after the film “Selma” did not collect the best picture Oscar.
Actor Dean Cain criticized the diversity ruling this week by asking when the academy would start handing out “participation awards.”