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Vulture: “Great Oscar Farce”

22.05.12

As with that misogynistic competition, in which women’s bodies are dissected, judged, and then held up as a false ideal for the public, I can’t see the value in saying one artistic endeavor is better than another. This is also true of the Emmys, the Grammys, and the Tonys, as well as the various arts-related Pulitzers, of course, but the incredible attention lavished upon the Academy Awards demands it be singled out as a meaningless and misleading worst offender.

Instead of calling the ultimate award given at the Oscars “Best Picture,” they should really call it “the Favorite Picture of the Roughly 6,000 Academy Voters.” Given the makeup of this group — older, whiter, and more male than movie audiences, which are younger and more diverse than the American public — it would seem that contests between Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction, The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine, The Hurt Locker and Avatar, or The King’s Speech and The Social Network are all foregone conclusions. It explains why the year Driving Miss Daisy won for Best Picture, Do the Right Thing wasn’t even nominated. And it also suggests why genres preferred by younger audiences, such as comedies and animated movies, are rarely nominated and almost never win when they are. Can you really say that Borat didn’t deserve a nomination but Letters From Iwo Jima did? Beyond the fact that the older, white, rich liberals in the movie business will bring their own tastes to the Oscar ballot, human nature dictates voters will choose films that say something about how they see themselves: They want to be known as thoughtful, sensitive people who prefer less entertaining but more socially conscious films. Voting for a tedious movie about racism and injustice like Crash instead of meaning-free crowd pleasers like Wedding Crashers, Batman Begins, or Mr. and Mrs. Smith mitigates the voters’ guilt about parking their SUVs in handicapped spots and being part of the one percent.

Source: Awards Daily