Have you seen the Oscar’s new requirements for Best Picture?Oh boy non-binary!  Excuse us—really sorry! Got to be inclusive!

Here’s a paraphrase of the statement on what they are trying to achieve: this is the next phase of the Academy’s equity and inclusion initiative increasing the organization’s increasing efforts to increase inclusion in the entertainment industry and increase representation. Increase. Got it? There’s not enough without increasing! No matter that the last four Best Picture winners would still be the last four Best Picture winners without this “inclusion initiative.” Says the Left: We must do more! There must be rules!

And so there are. Starting 2024, films must meet two of four standards, with two standards having a choice of three requirements, one with just one, and one having two. Some focus on somewhat secondary areas like training opportunities and marketing and distribution jobs, but that speaks to just how prescriptive the rules are. What if the Better Business Bureau would not give a family plumbing business an A rating if the business could not prove it gives individuals from underrepresented groups internships? Do toilets unclog faster with that mandate? Another Academy requirement would suggest that if the plumbing owner himself were a woman, racial or ethnic minority, LGBTQ+, or has cognitive or physical disabilities, that could meet a standard instead. Yes, we want the plumber who has a cognitive problem understanding that sh*t flows downhill!

Had you read Fifty-Six Things The Left Will Take Away From You, you would not be at all surprised by this development. A few chapters talk about schemes already scoring films on such criteria, and on the constant calls to the Oscars to find fewer honors for films with white people. Stephen King, who as a voting member of the Academy should know about such concerns, in early 2020 was mauled for saying he would never cast his vote considering diversity. Kirstie Alley, upon hearing the new standards, tweeted “You people have lost your minds . . . can you imagine telling Picasso what had to be in his f***ing paintings” and was also excoriated. She promptly retreated, as she did after coming out for Trump in 2016.

Clearly the biggie is the Oscar requirement that the film feature actors or a storyline of an underrepresented group. To qualify, lead actors can come only from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. Apparently there are already enough LGBTQ+ and cognitively impaired lead actors. Makes sense. Storylines and the ensemble cast can pull from any of the underrepresented groups, but for the ensemble cast two groups must be included. No tokens!

Here the fun begins. How could we fix the Best Picture Winner Titanic? Rose and Jack were both white. White supremacist! Of course, Rose was a first-class cabin elite owing to her white privilege. Jack is a rogue, a poor orphan who won his ticket in a poker game. But a rogue who is white still has white privilege to fall back on to place him in a game he would never have been in otherwise. Even the cruise line featured in the storyline was the White Star Line. Racist! Spot any black or brown people in the lifeboats? Barbaric! The director back in 1996 decided they must all die!

In the new Titanic, Rose is a wheelchair-bound Latinx trans woman on an LGBTQ+ cruise. Jack is a biracial crew member masquerading as straight to meet the discriminatory hiring practices of the evil White Star Lines. They are magnetically attracted, but Jack cannot divulge his sexuality and gender preferences. When the homophobic Captain Smith deliberately crashes the ship into the iceberg, Jack saves Rose by unstrapping her from her wheelchair. He grabs a passing unicorn pool float upon which he places Rose to be rescued, but just after he confesses his love and true sexuality, he slips beneath the water and the end credits roll.

Forrest Gump also merits a new treatment. Almost omnisciently, long before its time, it portrayed a cognitively impaired man as the hero, but he was unfortunately whiter than white. Now he will be an Indigenous Person, whose cognitive impairment was caused by the fetal alcohol syndrome of his mother, who drank to distance herself from his abusive wife-beating white father.

Schindler’s List? The Left will declare the Jewish population is improperly portrayed as underrepresented and victimized, and it will be remade transplanted to Trump’s concentration camps of aliens on the southern border where Hispanic children are imprisoned in cages until they die.

The Silence of the Lambs also comes up wanting by the new standards. Yes, Clarice the heroine is a woman, but again, she is white, and she works for the FBI—the police. Ugh! In the new version, she will be a black single-mother blogger and restorative justice advocate who reaches out successfully to Hannibal Lechter. She counsels him to stop eating only gay people and to either cease entirely or at least round out his tastes and demonstrate some equity.

Seen any good movies lately? Check with the Left on coming attractions.