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Amazon: how the studio plans to promote inclusion and diversity

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KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
In a document made public this Wednesday, June 16, 2021, the Hollywood studio unveils its policy to put inclusion and diversity at the heart of its future productions

amazon-1200x537.png


Amazon Studios is taking the lead for diversity by unveiling, this Wednesday, a charter which details its conditions to promote inclusion in its future projects.
This new policy covers four main areas where the company wants to improve to spotlight diverse stories and talents: story and character development, recruiting and manufacturing, tracking and documentation, achievement of objectives.

In its charter, Amazon Studios specifies that the main creative team of each film and series, namely directors, writers and producers, must include at a minimum, 30% of women and 30% of people from a minority. The objective of this measure is to achieve perfect equality, i.e. 50%, from 2024.

The charter is also concerned with the choice of actors and actresses, a subject that comes up many times in the industry.
The characteristics of the performers - their gender, nationality, sexual orientation or skin color - should correspond to the characters they will perform. For example, a transgender protagonist can only be played by a person concerned by transidentity.

For its next fictions, the studio wants to include at least one character in a speaking role from the following categories: the LGBT + community, a person with a disability or a person from a minority ethnic group.
The document emphasizes that one character can fulfill all three criteria. On the other hand, at least 50% of these characters must be women.

In order to find suppliers or traders for filming needs, such as catering, productions will also have to turn to at least one business run by a woman or by a person from a minority background.
In her press release, Amazon Studios president Jennifer Salke sums up: "We know all the work that remains to be done in terms of representation in front of and behind the cameras and it starts within the company, with us."

The entire charter and its many measures are available here.
 

kunonabi

Member
I dont watch Amazon junk anyway so all this crap will be an easy pass.

EDIT: Man, I need a poster or wallpaper of that Britney Spears shirt design.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Always a laugh how government is supposed to be all about equality and giving everyone a fair chance.

"Give people a shot with an interview based on the resume, not how they look."

Yet in modern day, companies will even publicly state discriminatory hiring practices based on gender and race, which has zero mention on performance and skill set, yet it thrives.

No balls government at its best.
 

dcll

Banned
If I can just finish Yellowstone without it being fucked up by this bullshit then I don't care if I ever watch tv or movies again. I have already been pretty much done with tv and movies for awhile but I would like to finish Yellowstone at least
 
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Ownage

Member
I dont watch Amazon junk anyway so all this crap will be an easy pass.

EDIT: Man, I need a poster or wallpaper of that Britney Spears shirt design.
It doesn't matter if these movies are a bust. Prime Video is a tax write off for the mothership. If the films do well, it's good PR. If they do poorly, losses mean tax breaks.

Win:Win
 
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Yoda

Member
On the other hand, at least 50% of these characters must be women.
Not sure if I'm misreading, is this 50% of the "inclusive characters" or 50% of all characters? If the latter, a movie like 300 flat out can't be made? Or Band of Brothers? I guess they could inject a bunch of scenes about something other than the 300 or Band of Brothers, but would anyone care to watch that/would it improve the quality of the movie? I rarely use Prime Video, but I guess I'll end up using it less unless these productions somehow manage to produce quality art... But given their first concern will be an ever growing list of boxes to check, I really doubt they'll manage to create content that's truly worthwhile.
 

Ballthyrm

Member
I can guarantee that this "diverse" group of people will go on to make the same cookie cutter , generic, bland TV
I think the netflix approach of giving its local production a global audience is a much better idea than this "by the numbers" shit.

We had Dark(German), Lupin(French), Kingdom (South Korea), Borgen (Denmark), Cable Girls (Spain)
All a lot more diverse than this pretty bad idea.
 
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Dr.Morris79

Gold Member
So Amazon will go down the drain like Netflix, nice.

6064e24ced835-3123894584.jpeg



Guess there's always the hope of good foreign stuff. Just like Kingdom (Korea) and Dark (Germany) have been some of the only decent Netflix originals in recent times.
Jesus, i'm dying here!! You arsehole!

Picture of the year.
 

teezzy

Banned
I can guarantee that this "diverse" group of people will go on to make the same cookie cutter , generic, bland TV
I think the netflix approach of giving its local production a global audience is a much better idea than this "by the numbers" shit.

We had Dark(German), Lupin(French), Kingdom (South Korea), Borgen (Denmark), Cable Girls (Spain)
All a lot more diverse than this pretty bad idea.

Yknow when this sorta thing first started snowballing, I don't believe their intention was to make some weird quota

It seems to have started as a few random people who watch TV/movies saying, "boy it'd be nice to see more Pakistani women in sitcoms" or "I'd really enjoy seeing a trans man star in an action movie", and trying to have their vantage points heard. Yknow, and at its core... there's some nice sincerity to that. Narrative realism and guaranteeing an ROI for producers aside.

This approach is so weirdly cold and corporate under the guise of human interest. It completely exploits and conflates the root concern

I hope this falls flat on its face and people wake up for a change


It is doubtful though
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Yknow when this sorta thing first started snowballing, I don't believe their intention was to make some weird quota

It seems to have started as like "boy it'd be nice to see more Pakistani women in sitcoms" or "I'd really enjoy seeing a trans man star in an action movie". Yknow, and at its core... there's some nice sincerity to that. Narrative realism and guaranteeing an ROI for producers aside.

This approach is so weirdly cold and corporate under the guise of human interest. It's completely exploits and conflate the root concern

I hope this falls flat on its face and people wake up for a change


It is doubtful though
You wouldnt believe how many check boxes execs and HR departments have on their personal objectives lists for SJW kinds of issues.

What people don't know is it's not just for personal grandstanding. It's business related a lot of the time, since not only can companies brag about diversity to score brownie pts with the public, but for government contracts (although not sure how Amazon would fit into it), many big corporations must adhere to hidden government quotas in order to qualify for big project bids.

However, most people don't know that.

So in a way, you actually cant blame corporations sometimes as they are just following the money. It's actually government secretly dangling a carrot in front of businesses to purposely act that way because they know it's the best way to make things change fast instead waiting 50 years and hoping struggling groups make it on their own naturally over time.

For big Canadian projects involving telecom, diversity kinds of quotas are involved, and it goes farther than that. Winning bidders must also agree to support government groups involving small business help.

So it's a scratch my back and I'll scratch yours thing government always does.

Another example of government forcing companies to do stuff involves land development (not diversity related). You know all those big neighbourhoods of new townhouses and and condo towers that get built? Guess who pays for the nice renovated roads and parks that get built with it? The home developers pay for that in order to get a permit to build their homes.
 
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Eh, if I'm not happy with the show quality I'll withdraw from Prime like I'm on the verge with doing with Netflix and have done with Disney+
 

Sybrix

Member
'a transgender protagonist can only be played by a person concerned by transidentity.'

WTF does that even mean?

I am concerned by transidentity... so does that mean i can play a woman who can pick up a watermelon with one hand and size 12 feet?
 
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Xenon

Member
Change the name to Amazon Pride already.

Elmo and the GooGoo Dolls already have a theme song. The lyrics just need to be tweaked to be more inclusive about identity and less about accomplishments.

 
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B D Joe

Member
It sucks all this nonsense and it isn't going to get any better anytime soon, if ever?

I've personally made peace with the fact netflix / amazon stuff isn't made for me, Luckily there's a lifetime worth of old content out there from war films to westerns and actually hilarious comedies.

Plus I've always wanted to read more books which I can buy with the money I save on not paying their subscriptions anymore so win win.

Its definitely going to be interesting seeing historical titles completely distorting the past with this forced diverse casting through. Least we know what race and gender the bad guys will always be though eh? 😂
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
I wouldn't mind most of this inclusion stuff IF the story wasn't set in the same 99% straight white scenarios we've seen for 100 years.

Court of England, Victorian England, WW2, Revolutionary War Boston, NYC upper crust elites of the 60's, Vikings, Renaissance Italy, etc etc.

So they just race and gender swap to meet the checklist instead of tell new and novel stories in new and novel settings. I think this is because they KNOW a detective series in Pakistan with a gay lead will bomb but an american based detective show that just happens to star a gay pakistani character at least has a chance.

A guy on guy sex scene is NEVER gonna have the appeal of a hetero or girl on girl one. So we just scratch out all the sex scenes.

I'm really curious when peak mediocrity is hit just what will happen to all of these shows. They have virtually zero syndication appeal or any buzz. I'm struggling to think of any show in the past 5 years that had even a fraction of the water cooler chat of even a medium weight HBO show, much less a decent network show. Binge dropping episodes kills even online chat. TV is dying and I don't think they even realize it yet.
 

sackings

Member
I'm still getting over this being the funniest shit i've seen in a long time..

CDR2Qq8.jpg


The western world is fucked, but fucking comical at the same time

Do you laugh or cry though?

 

xrnzaaas

Member
I'm so glad I have a shelf full of all my favorite TV shows on DVD

Good riddance, television. I'll just keep pretending the early 00s never ended

I'm 30 and I feel ancient
Yep, I pretty much stopped watching modern tv shows and films except for some rare smaller projects which didn't come from any of the big studios. I don't sub to anything and I'm rewatching and catching up on older stuff from physical discs.

I can't wait for them to ruin the LOTR series. Tolkien gonna be rolling in his grave with their woke garbage.
He should share a coffin with Lovecraft, they'd have a lot to talk about. ;)
 
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Dr.Morris79

Gold Member
I vote with my goddamn wallet.
Last vote was "fuck you, Gillette" (discovered Panasonic's amazing shavers and am not looking back)
Ha, yeah what was that shite about!

But saying that I cant remember when I last clean shaved, I think it was 2009.
 
So much nonsense it's shocking.

So if a film features an extra terrestrial character, like a space show or movie, does it need to be played by a real-life alien?

If there's a scene with a cancer patient, or somebody in a wheelchair, does it need to be played by a real life terminally ill person and also a real life paraplegic?

I can go on and on, but this is what mental illness does to society, it's never-ending.
 
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