Stephen King writes an essay clarifying his controversial Oscars comment

Stephen King retracted his controversial Tweet about the white-centric 2020 Academy Award nominations.

The esteemed author drew criticism as a member of the Academy over comments he made on Twitter saying he “would never consider diversity” as an Oscars voter. This didn’t sit well with Twitter users and fans as well as his fellow Academy member, Ava DuVernay. The filmmaker responded to King with feelings of dismay and disapproval.

Now, King wrote an essay published in the Washington Post op-ed on Monday but it didn’t echo the same sentiment as the remarks he previously made. In the piece titled “The Oscars are still rigged in favor of white people,” King retracted his comments confessing that he “stepped over one of those lines recently.”

“The subject was the Academy Awards. I also said, in essence, that those judging creative excellence should be blind to questions of race, gender or sexual orientation,” he wrote.

He continued, “I did not say that was the case today because nothing could be further from the truth.”

King clarified that performing artforms putting diversity and equality at their center “cannot be works of creative genius. They can be, and often are.” He then used Duvernay’s Netflix limited series, “When They See Us” as a “splendid” example of this.

The Institute author called out numbers within the members of the Academy saying that only 32 percent of it are women and 16 percent are from minority groups. King described the numbers as “Not good enough. Not even within shouting distance of good enough.”

Ben Hornery
Ben Horneryhttps://bestinau.com.au
Ben is is a senior journalist and sport columnist for Best in Australia. He previously worked for the BC and other radio stations.
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