Why The Oscars Are Worse Than Useless

Above: Joanne Woodward admires her Oscar while husband Paul Newman regards his "Noscar" during his decades-long Oscar losing streak

MOONLIGHT might actually be my favorite movie from last year, which would make it the rare winner of the Oscar for Best Picture that lines up with my own taste. Having said that, and looking past the instantly legendary screw-up last night wherein Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were given the wrong envelope before taking the stage to hand out the award--I can't help but expressing my disgust at the whole Oscar thing.

Here's why the Oscars are worse than useless: Giving out competitive awards for art reduces art to a horse race. "The Oscars" is just the world's biggest reality game show, turning every film except one into a "loser." MOONLIGHT won, so LA LA LAND lost, but why in the name of all that is holy are these two films in a competition with each other in the first place? Was LA LA LAND the better film for the few minutes that its creators were on stage thanking their families and coworkers? Did it suddenly stop being the best picture released in 2016? Did MOONLIGHT suddenly become the best? No, because one director's love letter to the Hollywood musical and the other director's poignant exploration of race and sexuality were not trying to do the same thing. They are separate works of art, and though some people have tried to make them into proxies for larger cultural arguments the truth remains that the films themselves are self-contained works, both years in the making, and neither attempting to capture the current zeitgeist.

If MOONLIGHT won because Academy voters wanted to send some vague message about inclusiveness, then it really only proves the point that the Oscars are bullshit. MOONLIGHT is a great work of art. It didn't need a shiny gold man to be a great work of art. 

At this point, the most notable thing about the Oscars is how wrong they are. We could add up all the great films that didn't win the Oscar for Best Picture and we'd have almost all of the greatest movies ever made. Cary Grant never won a competitive Oscar, and neither did Judy Garland. Since they might be cinema's two greatest performers, does this make sense? After years of not winning, John Wayne and Paul Newman finally did win Oscars, but does anyone really regard TRUE GRIT and THE COLOR OF MONEY as their greatest performances? Do many people consider SCENT OF A WOMAN to even be a passably good movie, much less Pacino's best performance? Is TRAINING DAY really the keeper from all the leading performances that Denzel Washington has given?

The answer to all these questions is no, yet the Oscar myth creates a counter-narrative in which competing marketing campaigns decide which work of art had more merit, all for the benefit of a flashy television event, the real purpose of which, like the Super Bowl, is to sell soap and beer during the commercial breaks. The awards themselves have a longer history, with their roots stretching back to a promotional scheme cooked up by Louis B. Mayer, a scheme that first morphed into a status symbol (industry bragging rights in a one-industry town) before becoming modern television's biggest waste of time.

Like I said, though, the awards show is worse than useless, it's reductive. It diminishes, for the sake of money, artists and works of art. The movie business is already volatile enough mix of art and commerce (of "movie" and "business"). How about we just skip the show next year and go to the movies? 

Oscar Schmoscar--Please Make It Stop

I can't remember the last time I watched the Oscars. The gaudy spectacle of the most famous people on earth taking four hours to congratulate themselves on television is unbearable. Ugh.

So, no, I didn't watch last night. But my new yearly ritual has been to roll out of bed the morning after the telecast and trip over all the footage of the nonevent. And have you ever noticed that the footage is always the same?

News Flash: The Oscars sucked last night.

News Flash: Someone said something stupid.

News Flash: The winners were the people who were predicted to win.

I could have written this two days ago and wouldn't have to change a word. It's always the same.

Since I'm a movie geek people always want to know what I thought of the winners. Here goes: I think voting on art is silly. I think Black Swan was trying to be Black Swan and The Fighter was trying to be The Fighter. Why force them to compete for a prize like a couple of Roman slaves? It makes no sense. It's a waste of time. Worse, it devaules the films themselves.

Is there an upside to all this bullshit? I'm forced to say yes. An Oscar nomination can shed light on a little-seen film. Something like Blue Valentine probably roped in some new viewers because Michelle Williams was up for best actress. Good. More power to her. Blue Valentine is cry-in-your-popcorn beautiful. It deserves so much more attention than it got. And if an Oscar nomination helps reward the people who made such a daring and lovely film, and if the promise of such an award motivates people with money to spend that money on such daring and lovely films, then I say that's wonderful.

Really.

But if we ever get to a point where the Oscars don't perform this function, a point where there's nothing left but the vapid, humorless, laborious broadcast itself then can we please just put Oscar out of his misery?

Can You Find 10 Contenders For Best Picture These Days?

When I read the news that the Academy Awards would increase the number of Oscar contenders from 5 to 10 starting next, my first thought was: does Hollywood make ten great movies a year? I suspect they don't, but I guess that's beside the point.

Everyone knows the only reason to raise the count from 5 to 10 is to pad out the list with more blockbusters. The Oscars are a once a year primetime television event, like the Super Bowl. Millions are made on it--magazines cover the films, fashions, and the horse race; billions tune in to watch the show so advertisers spend lots of loot to peddle their wares in between shitty production numbers; ect ect. Recently the audience for this whorefest has been shrinking. You nominate blockbusters for best picture in order to attract a wider audience. No one saw The Reader or Benjamin Button. No one tuned in to see if they'd win. Even Slumdog--which was a breakout hit--only made 141 mil. in North America. The academy wants to be able to nominate blockbusters to attract a bigger audience.

The Oscars already have to pad the list every year to get it to five films. I know that I'm a confirmed old school moviegoer, but c'mon...they really don't make 'em like they used to. The Reader? Benjamin Button? If you want to free up the list for blatant marketing schemes how about cutting out the fat from the list of five.

The criticism that the Oscar telecast is one giant beauty pageant is as old as the Oscars themselves. There is a reason for this. It's true. What does Best Picture even mean? Doubt was a good movie, so was Frozen River, so was the Dark Knight. But these movies are separate creations. They're not wrestlers on a WWF reunion tour. Why rig up a flashy, expensive televised event in which marketing teams compete to sell their product as the "Best Picture" of a certain 12 month span? It demeans the whole concept of artistic achievement. Think about it: after Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture did it become the best film released in 2008? Did The Departed become a better movie than Taxi Driver or Raging Bull because it won Scorsese his little gold man while those films did not?

Of course not. The Oscars mean nothing. Or they would mean nothing except that they purport to mean everything. They treat themselves with reverence, and the gaggle of fawning jackals that make up the Entertainment Media go right along with it. The Oscars are an empty exercise, a giant waste of time that exists only to make money by pretending to arbitrate art. At least this latest move makes their pointlessness all the more obvious.