You Don't Understand The Oscars

But it's okay to be upset at them

Last week drama ensued after Oscar nominations were released. Margot Robbie who played Barbie and Greta Gerwig who directed the movie didn’t receive nominations while Ryan Gosling who played Ken was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Many took to the internet to voice their opinion in this seeming cruel act of irony. How could The Academy nominate Ryan Gosling for Barbie? How could they when Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, the real creative voices behind the movie, got snubbed?

I’ll say right from the top, I don’t think Margot got snubbed due to sexism. Greta on the other hand has more of a case because her directorial vision is so overwhelmingly apparent in this film, but I digress. I say this even as a fan of Barbie and Greta, I own the 4k DVD and have watched all the special features, I like the movie a lot!

I think this incident shows the line the Oscars tries to walk, between being an industry awards show and the premier award for cinema. A line between the artists who make the movies and the public that enjoys them.

Oscars: The Industry Awards

Awards shows aren’t all that uncommon, it’s not unusual for industries to get together to celebrate the best of their craft. Did you know there is an American Concrete Institute and every year they host an Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards? I bet you didn’t. It’s incredibly common for people of a certain craft to come together and celebrate the best of the past year.

This is the primary way to view the Oscars, it is an awards show for the members of the filmmaking community made by the filmmaking community. It’s a celebration of their craft. This becomes apparent in their processes for selecting nominations and winners.

I originally wrote a couple paragraphs explaining the voting, but this tweet is much shorter and to the point:

Oscar voting system is weird and often misportrayed:

— Each branch votes on its own nominees (editors select Best Editing, actors select the four acting awards) on a ballot where everyone gets to pick five options.

— The whole membership votes for the winner in a first-past-the-post ballot.

— Everyone nominates the Best Picture slate, but then the winner is selected with instant runoff voting.

The upshot is there is no "The Academy" to make coherent selections.

There is no “Academy”, or some authoritative small group of folks making the decisions. No smoke filled back rooms. There are a little over 10,000 members of The Academy and they all have a say in the process. 

But this does lead to some weird effects due to the fact that The Academy is still a relatively select group within this industry. These people’s whole lives revolve around films, they take  movies very seriously and are passionate about them. They see movies in different ways than most people. It’s not that they’re mystics, but it’s like the difference between someone casually watching a football game and someone whose career is analyzing the sport. This causes tension because the public also has thoughts about movies. 

Oscars: The Televised Award Show for Media Popular With People

With the Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards you have probably never seen them or know any of the projects up for nomination.

The Oscars are awards for something very popular, movies! Even though they have declined in popularity over the last few years, movies are still one of the most dominant forms of commercial art in the world. The Oscars are only as popular as the movies they award. They get to have a glitzy swanky awards show because people all over the world pay to see movies.

So it comes to stand that people will have thoughts about movies. 

There has forever been tension between what’s popular with the people and what wins Oscars. While movies like Barbie, Superhero Movies, Harry Potter Movies, and other Blockbusters have been some of the highest grossing movies of the last few decades, they haven’t always been huge successes at the Oscars. This is because these aren’t the types of movies that members of the Academy see as their favorites. They might still like those movies, but not their favorites.

The Oscars is not a People’s Choice Awards, there is no voting on your cell phones now.

We All Want Validation

I think both sides of the tension are understandable because in the end everyone wants validation. The makers of the movies want the validation of being considered the best by their peers, and the people want to feel validated when the art they enjoy wins awards.

The reason why there has been such a brushup over Barbie nominations is because the movie meant so much to so many people. It can also seem like a great irony that the notable man in the women’s movie was nominated but the leading woman and female director weren’t nominated.

But even that is not true. Margot Robbie was a producer on the movie, so she is included in the Best Picture nomination. Barbie is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay which Greta Gerwig wrote with her partner Noah Baumbach. They were both nominated! Not only that but America Ferrera was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. In all, Barbie was nominated for 8 Oscars and 6 of those were for women.

Also if we look at the Best Actress category, all the people who beat out Margot were women! 

In the bigger context, four out of the ten Best Picture nominees are movies centered on women’s stories, and 3 of them are directed by women. One of those women, Justine Triet, is nominated for Best Director as well. Even though I personally believe Greta Gerwig should’ve been in the running for Best Director, the category is stacked with massive names at the top of their game. This has been a good year for movies, and especially a good year for women in movies. 

In Conclusion

I think it’s fine to be upset over Oscar nominations. If you personally think a movie should get more nominations that is totally fine. If you think your movie should win, that’s also fine. If you think some movie should not have been nominated, that’s okay. If you think more women should be nominated and win, that’s completely alright. 

That being said, these are subjective awards, our thoughts on them come from our personal experiences with the art. There is no objective “Best Movie” that can be determined using science. This is a popularity contest where the voters are an eccentric group of people who make movies.

Keeping this in mind is helpful. We all seek validation for the things that we like and that’s okay. Nobody is owed an award, and out of the 1000+ movies made every year in the US there can be only one winner in each category. Only way to win is for all their movie-making peers to think they were the best. You can have different opinions about what you liked vs what the Oscars liked, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s an injustice. Yes there has certainly been a history of exclusion of women at the Oscars in the past, but this year has brought nominations to many women and it seems to be increasing. Things are on the upswing, it’s just that it has to get filtered through a very eccentric group of people who have very specific thoughts on movies. 

I want to end by saying there are lots of good movies, go check out more if you haven’t seen any of the other Best Picture Nominations! Poor Things is an interesting exploration into how we relate to the world in all ways. Past Lives explores how loving someone can be complex. Anatomy of a Fall is a gripping courtroom drama that left me stunned. All of these are women focused films that are fantastic! I also absolutely loved The Holdovers and will hopefully see The Zone of Interest and American Fiction this weekend. It was a good year for movies even for films outside the Barbenheimmer, I recommend you check them out!

Anyway, tune in next week for my scathing essay on the injustices in the Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards. 🙂