I'd love to win an Oscar. Not for the glory, or the chance
to slap the audience with some truth bombs in my 27 minute, completely
improvised acceptance speech. To know that the best of the business have come
together and collectively agreed that you're the best at something this year must be accompanied by an immeasurable
level of pleasure and self-confidence. But there's a weird psychology behind
why we, the outside audience, care so much about the event, even when there's
new reasons every year to turn our backs on the whole darn thing.
1) The Omissions
There's a lot of films released every year, and the fact
that there's always too many to make the nominations arguably speaks to the
high standard of quality across the current industry. But, every once in a
while (i.e. pretty much yearly actually), there's an omission (or five) that
causes the entire populace to raise their hands in shock and anger. It's pretty
astonishing that an industry judged mostly subjectively can cause the public to
develop some sort of freaky hive mind, as if we all had the exact same idea
before the announcements as to what should and shouldn't have been nominated.
So if we're all up in arms outside the gates of the Oscar's
HQ, then why don't the judges share our preconceptions? Sometimes they just
straight up forget (being predominantly white men over 60), such as Joan Rivers
not being memorialised. Other times, the whole "being predominantly white men
over 60" thing means that their demographic affects their subjectivity, hence
David Oyelowo's lack of Best Actor Nod for Selma
in favour of a man who played a gun-toting "war hero" arguably less
believably than his stint as a talking racoon. This year's biggest omission was
The Lego Movie, a film literally
loved by millions, which is damn near inexcusable. And yet, we continue to
follow the Oscars...
2) The Cringey Self
Parodying
The Oscars have been going for a long damn time. It's not
exactly a formula you can shake up too much either. So despite numerous cries
for increased diversity, equality and consistency amongst the nominations each
year, we accept that the event itself is largely going to remain the same. There's
the usual jokes about people in the room, one of the prize giving guests will
upstage the actual recipient, and, all in all, there'll be a lot of clapping
and (pretending to be) smiling. The speech writers know this, and repeatedly go
to the same few mines for jokes in the hopes of striking gold where they've
already seen that there isn't any.
But then that's all part of it now. The back-slappy, self congratulatory
nature of the whole affair means that they almost have to lampshade every trope and cliché of the event, for fear of
not coming across as humble. As a by-product, it can then seem that the
hosts and award giving guests don't actually care all that much, as if even the Oscars are beneath them. I've
nothing against Neil Patrick Harris, and I believe he did a good job, which is
why the occasional struggle to draw comedy out of relatively lacklustre,
been-there-done-that material almost makes the whole event feel tragic by
extension. But still, we continue to watch the Oscars...
3) The Moments That
Go Viral
This year's Oscars can be summarised by three key moments - Patricia
Arquette's equal rights for women speech, Birdman
winning big (and Michael Keaton heart-breakingly not), and John Travolta making
up for last year's blunder by being even weirder. None of them quite reached
the heights of last year's selfie (revealed to be a publicity stunt by
Samsung), but all of which have achieved varying degrees of virality over the
last few days. When we think about the Oscar's ceremony, quite often our minds
go to these moments, because they almost justify the reason the whole thing is
televised in the first place.
Without these moments, in fact, the Oscars would just be
people reading from lists for several hours. This leads to interesting line of
thought - What if Patricia Arquette gave her impassioned speech about the
industry's fundamental imbalance on, say, The
Graham Norton Show? It would probably still have gone viral, due to the
nature of the message, so would it really be getting less of an audience,
simply because it isn't a globally
televised event? Is the best place to rage against the Oscars... the Oscars? The
event is reported to make the majority of its money from the TV and online
broadcast, but does it even need that
amount of money to exist? Still, the thought that next year will be different
is why we keep watching...
4) The "Best
Picture" Debate
To say the entire system is fundamentally broken simply
because Boyhood didn't win "Best
Picture" this year is, in my opinion, a slight overstatement. I'll come
out and admit, I haven't seen it yet, so, by all means, take my points with a
pinch of salt, because lord knows there's plenty of salt to go around. It's a
peculiar, almost religious, expectation that whatever the Oscars labels as
"Best Picture" is undeniably the "Best Picture". What gives
these white men over 60 more of a right than any of us? Sure, it's a voting
system, but why do their votes count more than ours? This is where the whole
thing starts to crumble.
When Boyhood won
most of the top BAFTAs, no-one was particularly argumentative on Birdman's behalf. I personally love Birdman, and scathing criticisms flung
at it simply because it won out in a private vote are perhaps just bitter
backlashes. I've seen Birdman multiple
times now (which doesn't excuse my lack of seeing Boyhood, granted), and it has so much to offer beyond the surface
level achievements in cinematography. I could go on and defend its win, but
really at this stage, I don't need to. The Oscars have spoken. We're not all
going to agree, and we're certainly not going to change their minds, which goes
back to my point about the omissions - why put ourselves through the stress of
argument and disagreement by continuing to pay attention to the Oscars?
5) In Spite Of All
This, We Need Them
One day, a guy called Oscar was watching films. He thought,
"Hmm, once these films are out there amongst the public, I wonder what
further reward the filmmakers get for their achievements, beyond that of box
office numbers?" That, my friends, is the brief, relatively made-up,
history of how the Oscars came into being. Whenever you create a piece of
media, whether it be film, television, art, theatre, radio, podcast, etc.,
there's a niggling little part of you that needs it to be validated, as much as
you might not want to admit it. There's only so many times your Gran can say
your novel is good, before you go seeking another opinion.
So, beyond the realms of commercial success, as well as a
few favourable reviews, what next? If your film has seeped into the public's
consciousness, sparking relevant debates and creating worthwhile discussion,
isn't your work done as a filmmaker / writer / actor, etc.? There's a lot of
rubbish floating around there, so your work may just have to float around
amongst that debris for a while, before performing reasonably well on DVD and
Blu Ray. Unless there was some system of categorisation and ranking that would
determine which films were truly top of the pile this year. Not only would it
serve as a commercial boost, but it would also elevate your status as a
filmmaker, paving the way for even greater projects down the line. THAT is why
we need them, for all of their flaws. To allow the best to keep getting better.
James Cottle, after
studying Scriptwriting for 4 years, is now an embittered real life freelance
writer, and seeks to unlearn everything he knows. But he needs your help...
Follow him on Twitter @Jxmxsc and share this blog to help spread his anarchic
plight for reform amongst the writing masses.
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