Outrage and scepticism at new Oscars film category
WHEN the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its decision last week to add an award for best popular film, the howls went up throughout the Film Twitterverse.
The outrage was quickly matched by scepticism, with observers noting that the idea emanated from Disney ABC Television Group – the company contracted to broadcast the Oscars through 2028 and, coincidentally, includes the company that produces the Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar movies, all of which stand to gain the most from the change.
The new category – along with an earlier date and shorter running time of the telecast – were proposed to the academy just after this year’s awards show, which clocked in at three-hours-plus and suffered a 19% dip in viewership compared with last year.
The numbers were particularly dismal when it came to young viewers, who stayed away in droves.
Heaven forfend that ABC should re-examine the writing and production values of a telecast that is notoriously bloated, forced and un-fun to watch.
Perhaps the organisation should now be called the Academy for Motion Picture Arts, Sciences and Entertainment. This might be the logical, if regrettable, outcome of what happens when you take a relatively intimate, inside-industry event and televise it to the masses, who might jeer at what they consider an elitist ritual of selfcongratulation, but are nonetheless eager to have their own tastes ratified by the very elites they’re reviling.
The new category also reflects a misunderstanding of how the Oscars has become a business model unto itself, creating its own brand of blockbusters that become audiencefriendly hits because of added awareness that accrues throughout splashy awards season events. It’s the Academy Awards that popularise films that otherwise might get lost in a crowded shuffle.
The King’s Speech had made little more than $61 million when Academy Awards nominations were announced in January 2011; the best picture winner went on to earn more than $414m worldwide. This and other similar success stories were all more profitable than the typical Hollywood blockbuster, having been made for a pittance compared with the lavish budgets of special-effects spectacles and comic-book movies.
The devil will surely be in the details. For now, the academy has consigned whoever wins best popular movie to a special hell: their achievement will always have an asterisk attached. And they’ll know that, in a cynically conceived tugof-war between art and commerce, even when they won they lost.