Ah, Oscars eve-eve-eve-eve-eve. A time for reflection. A time for predictions. The Academy Awards will be handed out soon, as they are every year, but before they are I think it’s important to remember; they don’t really matter.
Well I mean of course they do matter. They’re essentially the pinnacle of mainstream American film culture, getting recognized there means having achieved a degree of commercial success and creative validation most filmmakers can only ever dream of, and for the people who are actually nominated it’s the culmination of a (sometimes literally) life’s work and confirmation that they did indeed “make it.”
But at the same time, the awards themselves mean less, than the conversations they start and messages they send. For example, two years ago “Argo” winning didn’t mean very much, but the fact that a tiny, Sundance drama with an almost all black cast like “Beasts of the Southern Wild” could get acknowledged was huge (and may have helped pave the Sundance-Oscar road for “Boyhood” and “Whiplash” this year).
Examining this year, one thing is apparent; the Academy likes stories that speak to them specifically. Look at the two frontrunners for Best Picture, “Boyhood” and “Birdman.” One tells the story of what it’s like growing up as a middle-class white boy, the other is about the craziness and challenges of working as an actor. Academy voters are overwhelmingly male and white, and actors represent the single largest voting block. And this year, they’re voting for films that tell, basically, their stories.
And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, per say. But taken alongside what amounts to a shutout for “Selma” (and people of color and women across the board), the message is pretty clear. It doesn’t matter how perfectly your film checks all the Oscar boxes (and it doesn’t get more Oscar-y than prestigious historical drama). If it doesn’t reinforce the views and feelings that are already entrenched in the mainstream of Academy opinion, it isn’t going to get recognized. It has nothing to do with “historical inaccuracy” (“American Sniper” and “The Imitation Game” have at least as much to criticize) and it has nothing to do with “Selma’s” screeners going out late (“American Sniper” went out at the same time). It has to do with their not validating perspectives that challenge, or at least complicate, theirs.
And of course it’s political. It gets very wrapped up in the campaigns studios mount, the ads they take out, the interviews they send people on. It also determines which films will get a boost at the box office and be seen as viable profit-making and award-winning ventures in the future (which feeds into the very circular logic of “films led by women or people of color don’t make money or win Oscars,” and reinforces Hollywood’s deep representation problem).
But, there is hope. Because when the nominations were announced, they were met with an absolute thunderstorm of debate, discussion and criticism on social media, film blogs, etc. Which is great, because it means is that the significance of the nominations, in a bigger cultural sense, was taken out of the hands of the people who were voting to see their own types of stories validating, and into the hands of anyone who feels the need to talk about it. To the point that the Oscars are less about the awards themselves, and more about the sorts of conversations they inspire. Conversations that can provide much more insight into our film culture, and what it means, and can affect change much more quickly than an award ceremony ever could.
So maybe that’s, for now, the best function of the Oscars. To provide a picture of the filmmaking institution, and create an opportunity for widespread, meaningful critique of that image, or at least contemplation. At any rate, I have provided some predictions.
Happy Oscars.
What are your predictions for who will win each award? Do you agree with Austin’s predictions? Let Austin know at wellens@wisc.edu.
