Award season is a time to celebrate the best of music, television, film and more. Between the Golden Globes, the Grammys and the Emmys, there are plenty of opportunities for entertainers to gain recognition. However, the title for the most popular award show goes to The Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars. Despite its popularity, the event has been subjected to many allegations, from being accused of racism to rumors about the awards being rigged. Amid all the controversy, the Oscars’ quality and acclaim have been declining as the show shifts to a more competitive nature, rather than focusing on its true purpose: appreciating the films up for an award.
The Oscars’ credibility first took a hit in 1999 when the “Best Picture” award went to “Shakespeare in Love” over what the public thought was the more popular choice, “Saving Private Ryan.” The backlash wasn’t aimed at the movie as both received good reviews from critics; the main issue was the campaigning.
Before 1999, campaigning for movies was done in order to potentially give the upper hand over the other nominees. However, Harvey Weinstein, the head of Miramax, the studio behind “Shakespeare in Love,” took it a step further.
“[Weinstein had] turned Oscar campaigning into much more of a blood sport,” Michael Schulman, author of Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears, said. “From his perspective, and from the perspective of the people who worked for him at Miramax, they had to campaign for Oscars because they were the underdogs.”
In the end, Weinstein’s questionable methods of guilting the press, bad-mouthing other nominees to Academy members as well as a dependency on cheap publicity succeeded in the long run.
“When the evening of the Oscars finally arrived, it felt less like a celebration of film and more like the climax of a months-long dogfight,” Clare Thorp of the BBC said.
The general reaction to the 1999 Oscars was disappointment. Weinstein’s campaign forever changed how the competition for awards would be handled and shifted the public’s view on the Oscars. Now, it is more common to see negative reviews on social media due to fan favorite movies being “snubbed” or “robbed” of a deserved Oscar. However, this creates a problem in itself. In the 2024 Oscars for Best Animated Feature Film, The Boy and the Heron won over the popular vote of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. This caused outrage online, as the actor who played Spider-Man even tweeted how they were robbed.
However, in my opinion, The Boy and the Heron was an amazing film with beautiful animation, thought-provoking messages and very well deserving of the Oscar that it won. However, due to the competitive nature of the Oscars, a less popular movie like The Boy and the Heron, will always be known to some as the movie that took away Spider-Man’s Oscar. Many viewers who favored one movie over another may fail to recognize or come to appreciate the film that won one over their pick.
The “Best Animated Feature Film” is often the topic of much discussion as any animated feature film can be eligible. Adding additional categories, similar to the Golden Globes where movies are categorized by genre, could help both an action animated film as well as a more mature dramatic animated film gain recognition.
In 2000, the Oscars reached 46.3 million viewers, with an audience anxious to see what scandals would go down in the new millennium. However, beginning in 2001, the Oscars’ viewership began to drop, falling all the way to 10.4 million in 2021. Many have stopped watching to not be continuously disappointed waiting for the “Best Picture” award, only to find out their favorite movie lost to ‘Oscar bait.’
Oscar bait movies are large-budgeted, lengthy, dramatic films about overcoming adversity, rich with symbolism and sentimentality, sometimes relying on American propaganda. These films are typically released toward the end of a year to meet the minimum eligibility requirements for awards in hopes that the recent release will create bias in voters. They often also rely on winning awards as a strategy to create buzz around a film. Oscar bait was a term coined in 1942 but popularized in 1978 as studios began to use nominations as promotional strategies more frequently. Popular movies recognized as Oscar bait are Amsterdam (2022), Babylon (2022) and Music (2021), meeting the requirements with profound plots and over-the-top budgets and sets. Personally, I was largely disappointed with the most recent best picture win. Movies like Oppenheimer, which fits the criteria for Oscar bait, while well liked, fail to do anything different from most biopics, while movies like Barbie were critically acclaimed as well as creating a cultural movement. When an Oscar bait movie wins an award, it takes away recognition from other well- deserved films. Movies that win awards become more well known and reach a broader audience, while those that don’t, fail to gain recognition aside from a nomination.
The competitiveness of the Oscars perpetuates this. By promoting an already large, big budget studio film over a smaller indie film, that indie film may not reach as many people as it would have if it had won. This isn’t the celebration of film;, it’s a competition to see what recipe will make a movie most likely to win, ultimately leading to a lack of unique films. Adding more categories, such as “Best Indie Film” or “Best Animated Comedy” would allow for a broader range of movies to gain recognition. . Many unique, now classic films, have never won an Oscar, including genre- defining films like A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner . Despite the controversy, many admired actors and actresses have praised the Oscars for recognizing and honoring the best performances, stories and films.
“I think the Oscars do a very good job in representing much of the great work in a given year,” actor Ethan Hawke said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “Inevitably though, many great films and performances are not recognized and can be overlooked due to the mass marketing and public relations machines that march through the awards season. I don’t mean to take anything away from the genuine and deserved excitement that every nominee should feel.”
However, winning or even being nominated for an Oscar can often boost the actor or actress’s career and open them to more opportunities. Despite this, many actors have also spoken out against the award show for its competitive nature, with some describing it as “utterly meaningless.” Stars such as Joaquin Phoenix, Anthony Hopkins and Bradley Cooper have all stated their negative views of the Oscars.
In the future, hopefully the Oscars can prioritize the appreciation of films instead of pitting them against each other. Incorporating small things, such as expanding categories and limiting the number of nominations for one movie, can allow for a broader selection to surface, appealing to a broader audience and potentially regaining the status they once had.
