Artwork by Michael DiMilo
The Oscars: A No-Win Situation
By Geoff Carter
Like many fans of the cinema, we at The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies took a keen interest in the announcement of the 2024 Academy Award nominations, mostly because 2023 was such a phenomenal year for films. From the cutting-edge, envelope-pushing surprises of Barbie and Poor Things to the complex psychological dynamics of Anatomy of a Fall to the cutting social satire of American Fiction and compassionate portraits of the misbegotten in The Holdovers to the historical epics Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer—and more, there was indeed something for each and every viewer. The art of cinema (if we include streaming features) has never before reached such an incredible level of excellence as it did this last year.
It is important that these achievements of filmmaking be recognized, but there always seems to be those who are overlooked, underappreciated or just plain snubbed. Part of the problem with these inequities seems to be creating a fair and equal rubric for judging these films. How can Barbie be compared to Oppenheimer (even though they were briefly joined in the unholy marketing creation Barbenheimer)? How can The Holdovers be compared to Poor Things? How can anyone say that Killers of the Flower Moon is a better film than American Fiction? These comparisons are not just apples and oranges, they’re gorillas and butterflies.
This is hardly a new problem. The Oscars have come under criticism for years for playing favorites, and sometimes turning recognition for artistic achievement into a mercenary competition. It’s well known that certain studios and producers lobby for their own products, sometimes ending in surprising results at the podium. Viewers were shocked in 1999 when Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture. Not that Shakespeare in Love was not a good movie; it is in fact excellent, but the brilliant direction in Ryan was ground-breaking. The opening D-Day sequence was so harrowingly realistic that some veterans who had been in Normandy on that fateful day had to leave the theater. Harvey Weinstein, one of Shakespeare’s producers had launched an all-out campaign to ensure his movie snared the Best Picture Oscar. He succeeded.
The Golden Globes have sort of a solution to differentiating recognition of artistic achievement in cinema. The category for Best Film has been divided into Best Motion Picture—Drama and Best Motion Picture—Comedy. This helps, although it is hardly a magic bullet. A few years back, Jordan Peele’s breakthrough film Get Out was nominated for a Golden Globe as a comedy. While there are some ironic moments in the film, it is hardly a knee-slapper. This past year, the Golden Globes unveiled two brand-new categories: the Golden Glove for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement and a Golden Globe for Best Performance in Stand-up Comedy on Television. Barbie won the box office award, which almost seemed like a door prize or aa participation certificate.
Both the Golden Globes and the Oscars also have awards for Best Animated Feature Film, which also has helped distinguish different types of films. The Academy Awards also has two categories for screenplays, original and from and adapted source. This brings up another irritation about the Barbie film. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s brilliant screenplay for Barbie has been nominated in the Adapted Screenplay category. Adapted from what? The back of the box the doll came in? The genius and sheer audacity of this brilliant screenplay was not adapted from anything. There was no novel or autobiography about the Barbie doll. So why this category? Part of the reason may be that the Academy needed to squeeze in certain nominees and had to juggle to get all the chosen onto the ballot.
Another standing criticism the Academy has been trying to deal with is their reluctance to recognize performances or achievements by people of color—or gender. In a recent study by Annenberg called the Inclusion list, “researchers found that since the inception of the Academy Awards (including the 2023 ceremony), 17 percent of all nominees were women, ‘“while only 6 percent were people of color and less than 2 percent of nominees were women of color.”’ (NewAmerica). The proportions of these populations receiving awards were roughly equal to the ratio of nominations.
Just last year marked the first time a woman of Asian-American descent (Michelle Yeoh in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once) won the Oscar for Best Actress. This year a woman (Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon) of Native American descent has been nominated for Best Actress for the first time ever. Women, mostly white women, have made some strides, but The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences still seems to an entrenched patriarchy. While Justine Triet was nominated as Best Director for her stunning work in Anatomy of a Fall, Greta Gerwig, the director of the ingeniously inventive and hilarious Barbie—which also happened to the highest grossing film ever directed by a woman—was snubbed, as was Margot Robbie, who starred in and produced the film. Ryan Gosling, however, who played Ken, was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor.
Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. A movie that championed feminist ideals and examined the complexities of being a woman in a man’s world while simultaneously lampooning the male corporate patriarchy snubbed the two women most closely associated with its production and instead nominated Ryan Gosling, the actor who portrayed Ken? Don’t get me wrong. Gosling’s nomination is well-deserved. He was brilliant as the most mixed-up man in the world, but the irony here is beyond delicious. I don’t think the Academy could have done worse if it was trying to embarrass itself and its members.
Awards season is fun—kind of a guilty pleasure, I guess, but it is a game played on a tilted playing field. First, finding an objective rubric to judge films or performances is impossible. Normal metrics like points just don’t work. Secondly, because winners are determined by ballot, politics has become an integral part of the process. The best film doesn’t always win (especially if its producers don’t push it hard enough). And, finally, like all American institutions, the Academy is infected with institutional racism and sexism. It’s working on it, but it’s not quite there yet.
But all this is sort of moot. These awards are not nearly as important as the recognition they encourage, not only for the nominees but for quality cinema everywhere. Short films, documentaries, and many films would pass under most viewers’ radar if it wasn’t for these programs. So, yes, they’re flawed. Yes, they more often than not overlook marginalized filmmakers (but they are getting better). So, I will watch the movies and judge for myself.