How the Academy Awards honour past performances more than recent Sadaf Ahsan What’s in a name? A whole lot when it comes to Oscar voting

THE OSCAR STATUETTE WEIGHS FOUR KILOGRAMS, AND STANDS 34 CENTIMETRES HIGH. IT WAS NAMED BY MARGARET HERRICK, THE ACADEMY LIBRARIAN, WHO REMARKED IN 1931 (UPON SEEING THE STATUETTES), ‘WHY, IT LOOKS LIKE MY UNCLE OSCAR!’

While we’d like to imagine that the Oscars always honour the best films and performances of the year, the truth is that there are many factors at play when Academy members — a 7,000+ group of directors, actors, editors, writers, costume designers, you name it — vote on their favourites. In addition to simple subjectivity, a considerable number of votes are based on which name carries the most weight. Which means if an actor campaigns more by showing up at countless pre-Oscar events, much like Bohemian Rhapsody’s Rami Malek this year, their name will be at the front of voters’ minds.

Some may also benefit from the privilege of a quiet category. For example, it’s not rare to have a year of not-soshowy, less publicized performances all in one category, or batches of new talent who are far from household names. In these cases, the name that inevitably rises to the top is the biggest. They get by not so much on their performance that year, but their overall resumé. If that sounds unfair, it’s because it is. Not only to that winner’s fellow nominees, but the winner themselves.

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the most notorious examples of this consolation-style win. Having acquired a reputation for being one of the biggest Oscar losers of all time, by the time he finally picked up a trophy for The Revenant in 2016, he had been nominated five times without winning, despite each of those performances being the buzziest in their respective years. But 2016 was a quiet year for Best Actor nominees. Unfortunately, his win was for one of the most ostentatious films in recent Oscar history, throughout which he slept in animal carcasses, ate raw bison, glared and looked very, very cold. It was the perfect bait for voters who would much rather award a loud performance than a subtle one. So it’s hard to reconcile the fact DiCaprio has an Oscar for that film and not The Aviator or What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, both of which drew far more nuanced, complex performances from the actor — and established his career. But alas, he was overdue.

We’ve seen it with Colin Firth, as well, who won the Best Actor honour for The King’s Speech one year after losing for his stunning performance in A Single Man; Morgan Freeman, who won for Million Dollar Baby over The Shawshank Redemption a decade before; Al Pacino, who was nominated eight times before winning for Scent of a Woman, not The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon or even Glengarry Glen Ross.

It’s a Hollywood crime not limited to the acting categories. Martin Scorsese, who directed several of the most seminal films of all time, has been nominated a dozen times. And yet, he’s only won once — for The Departed, a perfectly fine and good film, but a fry cry from Raging Bull, Goodfellas or The Age of Innocence. And what of Alfonso Cuarón, who made a splash in 2014 with Gravity, despite being shut out a decade before with Children of Men?

This year, the likely culprit will be Glenn Close for The Wife. There’s no denying she’s on the same rung as Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro when it comes to acting greats. So it might be a surprise to learn that she’s never won an Oscar (no, not even for Fatal Attraction). This year marks her seventh nomination, but for an unimpressive film, and one for which reviews of her performance have been divided. But it’s also a year that includes three Oscar newcomers (Lady Gaga, Olivia Colman and Yalitza Aparicio) and a comedic actress (Melissa McCarthy), which are two things voters are historically happy to overlook in favour of a legend who has long paid her dues.

Does that make it right? Absolutely not, but that’s the Oscars for you.

Blame it on a dated industry. Hollywood is so prone to placing its legends on a pedestal that it often overlooks newcomers and fresher talent and, of course, diversity. It’s the same reason certain actors are shoo- ins when it comes to nomination time, and why Jennifer Lawrence, for example, is essentially guaranteed a nomination every year she appears in a film; she’s reached that particular, high-wattage calibre that assumes “best of the best” before it’s even proven.

In the end, it’s rarely about who is most deserving. Instead, it’s a case of status versus performance. It’s yet another reminder that Oscar wins are arbitrary. And we’ll more than likely be reminded again this year with yet another Close call.