The Oscars have long masqueraded as the most prestigious event in Hollywood, awards handed to the best, only the best films of the year. But uh… not really. Everybody knows by now that the movies that win the Oscars are not necessarily the best movies of the year, but the ones with the best marketing tricks. This is a system where mediocre nonsense like The Boss Baby (53% critic rating) can get Oscar nominations, so you know something has gone wrong. The movie industry takes its little gold statuettes quite seriously, and a single studio can spend upwards of $20 million on galas, screenings, and advertising alone. Yet the true cost of Oppenheimer’s win has little to do with money, but the narrative it reinforces about movies that can win best picture. Reader, what movies do you think should win? Those with the best sound design, costume design, or VFX? Those that are relatable, and appeal to the largest audience possible? Those that are creative and novel, risking voter appeal for the sake of a story?
The hilarious irony of the Oscar selection process is made abundant with Cord Jefferson’s comedy: “American Fiction” (nominated for best adapted screenplay and best picture). American Fiction follows a struggling African-American literary genius named Monk, stuck in a book market that rewards “black” tropes. As a jest, he writes a book chock-full of gun violence, domestic abuse, gangs, ghettos, and other cliches. To Monk’s surprise, a publishing house immediately offers to buy it, leading to a sequence of events that make him a millionaire. My favorite quote from the movie has to be: “The dumber I behave, the richer I get”.
To Monk’s utter dismay, his book gets nominated for an award which he is judging. The parallels between this award and the Oscars are striking. The judges barely read any of the books, and when it comes to Monk’s mockery piece, vague terms are thrown around: “a story that needs to be told”, “important for our times”, “highly relevant”. Not once does anyone mention “well-written”. Monk discusses with another black author the ways in which critics see books by disenfranchised communities as “powerful”, without ever acknowledging their artistic merits, or lack thereof. Well, they ask, what is the responsibility of writers, artists, and creatives? Is it justifiable to pander to the tastes of a market craving a single, definitive story? Or tell more risky ones, even if it means low sales?
This disparity has been crystal-clear with past award ceremonies. The year 1989 gave rise to two historic films about race: “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Do the Right Thing”. While both films were highly celebrated, the stories they told about racism differed strongly. Driving Miss Daisy, a movie directed by a white man about the friendship between an elderly white woman and her African-American chauffeur, was by all definitions considered “safe”, with an almost formulaic message about racial segregation. Meanwhile, Do the Right Thing, a black-directed film about neighborhood tensions in a Brooklyn suburb, was highly controversial, and challenged many common stereotypes at the time. Driving Miss Daisy won Best picture that year. Do the Right Thing didn’t even get nominated.
Spike Lee, the director of Do the Right Thing, later said, “The Oscars’ assessment of a movie’s quality usually isn’t held up by history. That’s why they don’t matter.” However, the Oscar’s assessment of a movie’s quality usually does impact box office receipts. And if it impacts the box office, it impacts the types of movies that receive funding, and therefore the types of movies that we get to watch. The stories that can be told, the stories that are allowed to be told, then, are largely decided by a group of movie critics, who don’t always judge a movie by its artistic merits. Don’t get me wrong, movies like Oppenheimer are good, but they’re also tired. Lincoln, Darkest Hour, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game, All Quiet on the Western Front, the list goes on. Historical dramas that are well-made but easily forgotten, telling the same “profound” stories with the same tropes; since 1929, these are the movies that have dominated the event.
American Fiction winning an award in the very institution it satirizes is beautifully ironic, and I have to wonder how many of the thousands who nominated it actually watched it. But it could never have won best picture. Especially when plagued by #OscarsSoWhite, awards won by radically different movies (see: Moonlight) feel undeserved, only given out so the academy could clear its conscience. Best picture winners must fulfil a lot of criteria, but they must also be inoffensive. American Fiction could never have won. Same with Do the Right Thing. 30 years after Spike Lee’s historic snub, his movie BlacKkKlansman, about an undercover detective who infiltrates the KKK, lost best picture to a movie about a black man being driven around by a white man. I’m not making that up. Green Book literally switched the driver and passenger from Driving Miss Daisy, told a very palatable story about racism, and still won. Spike Lee was understandably upset.
In Cord Jefferson’s acceptance speech for American Fiction’s best adapted screenplay award, he pleaded about the importance of telling different stories: “The next Martin Scorsese is out there, the next Greta is out there — both Gretas. The next Christopher Nolan is out there, I promise you.” But there doesn’t seem to be room for genre-defying stories at the Oscars. Just repackaged true-story dramas, and every decade a new happy movie about racism. For every Oppenheimer that wins, an American Fiction gets left in the dust. Every trite Driving Miss Daisy or Green Book teaches us that originality doesn’t win awards, pandering does. But with a voter pool interested in stories as diverse and interesting as a field of rice, one must wonder if they ever will Do the Right Thing.
