That fateful Sunday night on Feb. 24, everything that could go wrong went wrong. Nonetheless, the once-popular 91st Academy Awards went on, as all shows must.
Just so we’re keeping track, outside of all my own grudges with films that were snubbed, here are all the less-than-stellar moves the Academy made this year:
- the idea of a popular film category
- hiring and firing Kevin Hart as a host
- having no host
- Not televising certain awards, including cinematography and editing
The last move is particularly baffling. Let’s look at that word again: CINEMA-tography. You watch movies in a CINEMA.
All this controversy cast a dour mood over the show. Popular film website and Instagram page PT5Productions even said they would boycott it this year.
The show went on and in the end, the big winner of the night was Green Book, taking home the prize for best picture, best adapted screenplay and best actor in a supporting role (Mahershala Ali).
This choice pleased exactly no one—liberal critics complained it was racial fantasy, and right-wing critics complained it was a simplistic and misrepresentative formula for award pandering.
So Hollywood voted for Green Book for best picture, and now Hollywood is mad at Hollywood for voting Green Book for best picture.
Damn, Hollywood, why couldn’t you have given us a winner everybody wanted? Oh wait, is it really hard for 8,000 rich, mostly white, male, American voters to satisfy everyone?
Wow, who would have thought—maybe they should avoid political posturing, make real efforts towards better representation and actually reward good films based on art?
Bu then what would have won? First Man was not even nominated for best picture or any major category, that’s how little academy cares about movies.
The Favourite was good–maybe that should have won. Even though nobody went to go see it, and it’s about colonial England—oh, nevermind, it couldn’t win, that would not have been too good for public relations.
Or what about Roma by Alfonso Cúaron? The second most popular program on Netflix about cleaning up. The film took home best director and best cinematography, and its stunning sweeping power gained widespread critical acclaim.
But no fried chicken jokes and racial reconciliation, so that’s a no from the academy. Hey, what do popular opinion or critics know?
Black Panther—that could have been a good best picture winner as the first superhero film. It had strong elements,won best original score and best production design.
Funny it be recognized for appealing sets, because its name on the nominations list was the best prop for the Oscars this year.
Bohemian Rhapsody could have won—everybody liked that movie, now that it was absolutely-certainly-not-directed by alleged child molester Bryan Singer. Everyone denounced him, but suddenly we’re all cool—that movie wasn’t his work.
If only you people had been there to stop him before.
These were the worst Oscars since the La La Land–Moonlight Envelope Debacle. Or since Hathaway and Franco hosted. Or when it got awkward between Brie Larson and Casey Affleck.
But hey, it’s meant just to award films, regardless of the on stage controversies. Tough, is it even good at that? Let’s go back in time to investigate.
In 2011, the bloated boring Kings’ Speech beat the crisply photographed swaggering The Social Network, but maybe that was a one-off. Oh geez, pro-Americana political thriller Argo, that wasn’t the best movie of 2013.
So—there have definitely been a lot of best pictures that prioritized political posturing over arts. But nothing beats Crash in 2005 that movie was heavy-handed, contrived and made no sense.
Yet its interweaving stories of race won the best picture prize. It felt like a big old pat on the back for America “solving” its racial problems.
The academy claims to love race relations film but it’s astounding that it took them decades to honour one of the best Black directors in American film: Spike Lee, who took home the best adapted screenplay for BlacKKKlansmen.
That moment felt like redemption for 1990 when his touchstone film Do The Right Thing was nominated for the same award but lost to the one with Morgan Freeman driving an old racist lady around.
Unequivocally, Driving Miss Daisy is white saviourist fantasy, Do The Right Thing is a look into what it’s like to live in America as a black man–you know–because it’s made by a black man.
Unsurprisingly, there have been no best director prize for any Black directors. Fun movies that make white people feel good about themselves for fixing racial issues is one thing, but rewarding the hard work of members of marginalized communities? Apparently, we have to keep dreaming.
Really, when thinking about how little the Oscars do for the film industry as an art form, it’s best to think of this next example.
Citizen Kane did not win best picture. Citizen Kane. That title has become an adjective used to describe good movies. However, Citizen Kane is a satire of real-life figure William Randolph Hearst.
Hearst, an influential millionaire hated the film, bought copies actively trying to censor it and Hearst had many friends in hollywood. His influence ran deep and Citizen Kane did not win the best picture prize.
In 1941, that was a case of the Oscars being not objective and ineffective—it’s now 2019.
So, really, the Academy Awards are broken, but were they ever whole?
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