The Oscars’ Arrogance Is the Point
A brutally honest conversation with my colleagues about the awards industry and its future
Back in the ’80s, the Oscars were not meant for thinking people. There was never even a thought that your favorite movie would be nominated, let alone win. Instead, it was about watching which giant bloated monstrosity was celebrated by getting a bunch of trophies dumped on its head, on top of all the money that it made. Out of Africa won best picture; Stranger Than Paradise did not. People wore ridiculous outfits and it was spectacle.
But in recent years, there’s been a shift: Despite its arrogance and pomposity, people like the Oscars, even respect them. That’s why, as this year’s Oscar voting comes to an end today, I invited Katey Rich and Christopher Rosen — aka Ankler’s very own Prestige Junkies — to Rushfield Lunch to hold their feet to the fire and help me figure out why I should change my tune on the Academy Awards and learn to love the awards in full.
“The thing I always go back to is the best actress award that Jessie Buckley is going to win for Hamnet is the same one that Greer Garson won in 1943. It’s an unbroken chain of history,” Katey told me. “If the Oscars give up on that pomposity that you’re talking about, then you devalue what that statue means. Look, our institutions are crumbling. They’re being run by charlatans and buffoons around the world. So even if there is some pomposity to the Oscars, I’d rather have that than have everything mean nothing, which is what a lot of society feels like these days.”
During our conversation, we talked about everything: proposed changes to the ceremony, the Oscars’ jump to YouTube and the state of the current race between One Battle After Another and Sinners. We also debated what it means when the Academy itself — which has greatly diversified its membership over the last decade — changes its taste. A world of fewer Green Books, more Parasites and Anoras.
“Is it actually better for the Oscars to be out of touch with the culture, and then that gets more people excited to debate and be angry about it?,” asked Chris. “For me, if Goodfellas won best picture in 1991, I’d be like, ‘Yeah, no shit, it won best picture; it was great,’ and move on with my life. But that Dances with Wolves won instead, 35 years later… I’m still so mad, and I’m still talking about it.”
My beef with the Oscars is they tend not to celebrate everything movies can be -- and end up degrading the business in the process. What I mean by that is movies are the ONLY artform that brings just about every artistic craft together to create a product that has the capacity to entertain and move vast cohorts of humanity. What the Oscars seem to want to celebrate are movies that stimulate the intellects of a small clique of reviewers and enteratinment professionals who see hundreds of movies every year and are easily bored with anything that doesn't feel fresh and challenging to them. Consequently the Oscars celebrate movies that speak to an ever diminishing constituency, and in the process diminish their own cultural relevance. They also fail to boost the theatrical business, even though you might think promoting the movie business should be a part of the Academy's mandate.
What to do about it? My solution is to add a new award. In addition to "Best Picture" there should be an award for "Best Entertainment." If a voter thinks "Nomadland" was the most entertaining picture of 2020 let them vote for it, but others might think that while "Nomadland" might have been by some criteria the "Best Picture," "Palm Springs" was far more enjoyable time in the theater. I'm sure there's nothing that can be done about the Academy's dedication to intellectual snobbery and arrogance, but at least my idea would allow the Academy to occassionally elevate the movies the rest of us like.