Stephen King says Oscars are 'rigged in favor of the white folks'
Stephen King has rowed back on his controversial comments about diversity in the Oscars, acknowledging in a lengthy essay that the awards are still “rigged in favor of the white folks”.
King provoked anger among authors and fans after tweeting earlier this month that he “would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.” King is able to nominate films in three Oscars categories – best picture, adapted screenplay and original screenplay – and had been commenting on the lack of recognition for women and artists of colour in this year’s Oscars nominations.
“Damn, Stephen. Damn. I thought you were better than this,” said the award-winning American science fiction writer NK Jemisin. “It should be obvious that diversity and quality aren’t separate qualities, or in opposition to each other – except in the minds of bigots”. Writer Roxane Gay agreed. “As a fan, this is painful to read from you,” she told King. “It implies that diversity and quality cannot be synonymous. They are not separate things. Quality is everywhere but most industries only believe in quality from one demographic. And now, here you are.”
King later clarified his comments on Twitter, adding: “The most important thing we can do as artists and creative people is make sure everyone has the same fair shot, regardless of sex, color, or orientation. Right now such people are badly underrepresented, and not only in the arts. You can’t win awards if you’re shut out of the game.”
The bestselling horror novelist has now written an essay for the Washington Post in which he said that, following his comments, he had found himself “in the social media version of the stocks and subject to a barrage of electronic turnips and cabbages”.
King said he had mistakenly believed his statement about diversity in matters of art was “noncontroversial”, writing: “I also said, in essence, that those judging creative excellence should be blind to questions of race, gender or sexual orientation. I did not say that was the case today, because nothing could be further from the truth. Nor did I say that films, novels, plays and music focusing on diversity and/or inequality cannot be works of creative genius. They can be, and often are.”
He pointed in particular to Ava DuVernay’s 2019 Netflix miniseries When They See Us. DuVernay had been a critic of King’s original comments, tweeting: “When you wake up, meditate, stretch, reach for your phone to check on the world and see a tweet from someone you admire that is so backward and ignorant, you want to go back to bed.”
King wrote for the Washington Post: “As with justice, judgments of creative excellence should be blind. But that would be the case in a perfect world, one where the game isn’t rigged in favor of the white folks,” pointing to the demographic makeup of the Academy Awards voters: 32% women and 16% minority voters.
He continued: “Judging anyone’s work by any other standard is insulting and – worse – it undermines those hard-won moments when excellence from a diverse source is rewarded (against, it seems, all the odds) by leaving such recognition vulnerable to being dismissed as politically correct … We don’t live in that perfect world, and this year’s less-than-diverse Academy Awards nominations once more prove it. Maybe someday we will. I can dream, can’t I? After all, I make stuff up for a living.”