Ava DuVernay Slams Stephen King After He Says He Doesn’t Consider Diversity In Oscar Voting
It’s Oscars season, and thus, problematic takes about race related to the annual film awards will pop up.
This year, author Stephen King took the bait. Likely prompted by the justified outrage over the lack of Black representation in this year’s Oscars, the writer took to Twitter to say that he doesn’t consider diversity when he votes on nominees.
“As a writer, I am allowed to nominate in just 3 categories: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay. For me, the diversity issue--as it applies to individual actors and directors, anyway--did not come up,” he tweeted. “That said I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.”
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Ava DuVernay apparently wasn’t happy about the tweets. She tweeted, “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.”
Hours later, after receiving backlash from online trolls, DuVernay issued another tweet: “Me when the privilege protectors get exhausted with mansplaining and whitesplaining @StephenKing’s tweets to me and decide to move away from my timeline and get a life,” she wrote.
King saw DuVernay’s tweet and tried to change the subject.
Ava, respectfully, wasn’t having any of it.
Hours after his initial tweets, Stephen King did tweet about the importance of giving actors and filmmakers “the same fair shot.”
Lesson: Ava DuVernay isn’t about your flattery. Just do better.