Actor Richard Dreyfuss, who has starred in some of Hollywood’s biggest and best blockbuster films, doesn’t think much of Hollywood’s new inclusion standards.
Starting in 2024, films must “have a certain percentage of actors or crew from under-represented racial or ethnic groups” if they want to be considered for the “Best Picture” Oscar. Dreyfuss made an appearance on the PBS show Firing Line with anchor Margaret Hoover, who asked the actor what he thought about the new inclusion rules.
Dreyfuss declared, “They make me vomit.”
“Because this is an art form, it’s also a form of commerce, and it makes money, but it’s an art. And no one should be telling me, as an artist, that I have to give in to the latest most current idea of what morality is,” Dreyfuss said.
The actor continued, claiming that such guidelines stifle creativity and risk. “And what are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. And you have to let life be life.”
Dreyfuss further claimed he doesn’t believe that any group in society today should be given special treatment. He said, “And I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s a minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”
The actor then defended Hollywood legend Lawrence Olivier’s “Blackface” rendition of Shakespeare’s “Othello” in 1968.
He stated, “Lawrence Olivier was the last White actor to play ‘Othello,’ and he did it in 1965. And he did it in ‘Blackface.’ And he played a Black man brilliantly.”
He conveyed his point with a few rhetorical questions, asking, “Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man? Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish, they shouldn’t play the ‘Merchant of Venice?’ Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?”
Does ignoring political realities make them go away? Dreyfuss is not wrong. But he’s on the losing side of the argument because 1) he’s white, and 2) he’s not a “person of color.”
There is no “discussing” race — at least by white people — unless they acknowledge that anything they say must be accompanied by a giant caveat: I’m not a person of color so my views really don’t matter.
Just once, I’d like to have an honest, open, candid discussion about race and “inclusion” without being saddled with the false morality that I am somehow responsible for slavery and even for Jim Crow segregation. I am responsible — and Dreyfuss is saying the same thing — for my own life and my own actions. Judge me by those and not for the actions of white people I am not related to and don’t claim to represent.
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This notion of “collective racial guilt” is abhorrent to my republican soul and violates the most basic tenet of Americanism: I shall not suffer for the sins of my father. We gave that up in the 18th century.
Slavery was an abomination in every respect — a stain on America that we will never entirely wash off. But it’s hard to come to terms with this “original sin” when the descendants of those slaves — and others who see an advantage in agreeing with them — use the suffering and immorality of slavery as a political club to gain favors and benefits.
“Inclusion” is just another form of reparations — another way to assign the nauseating stink of collective racial guilt on those who don’t deserve it. Good for Richard Dreyfuss for calling out the Hollywood race hustlers.
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