This conversation is excerpted from correspondence between culture writers Jake Sweltz and Mike Lewis. It has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mike: Why are so many Oscar winners these days tiny indie movies most people haven’t heard of and/or don’t care about? Why does the Academy consistently ignore (if not outright scorn) the most popular and successful productions from an industry they participate in and are supposedly interested in celebrating?
Jake: This goes back to that pesky question we ask every year: Who are the Oscars for? It began as a private banquet for industry players with awards given as an afterthought, grew into a televised tradition whereby a curious and/or adoring public tuned in to see how Hollywood talked to itself, and has evolved into a weird political ritual by which the industry tries to convince us, the audience, that it has good taste and values. But all these manifestations of the ceremony presuppose the same thing: that the awards are ultimately not supposed to reflect the opinions of critics and/or moviegoers. That’s what the People’s Choice Awards are for.
Mike: Yeah, I’m generally fine with that idea, except I think they reflect the taste of critics way more than the general public’s, and they need to find a balance. The Academy may not really care what critics think, but it seems to have actual contempt for the average moviegoer, and that elitism is bad for all parties concerned. I really agreed with Sean Fennessey when he was defending Spider-Man as a “Best Picture” nominee on The Big Picture.
Jake: If the goal is to draw bigger ratings (remember, the Oscars were never meant to be a televised event), then yeah, it would make sense to nominate Spider-Man for everything. But the problem is that would compromise the ontological foundations of the Oscars as a ceremony by filmmakers for filmmakers. If the opinions of casual moviegoers came to directly influence Academy voting, it would create an existential dilemma over whether the awards should ever have been taken seriously. (Which, of course, they shouldn’t have been, and in fact weren’t when this whole business began.)
Mike: But, like, fuck ontology! They need the Oscars to matter because buzz from the Oscars drives ticket sales (or at least it used to), but no one cares about a recommendation that comes from a source you no longer trust. If every Oscar nominee feels like homework, or like something regular people with limited mindspace can’t relate to or won’t care about, that’s just kind of bad for movies. They have to be about more than whether the old white guys who decided to sit in a circle once a year and jerk each other off were right to do so. It should be about giving people a true sampling of the best films that came out that year, big and small, high and lowbrow.
Jake: We’re driving at a “prescriptivist vs descriptivist” divide around the ultimate purpose of the Oscars. I just can’t figure out which side is which. The prescriptivists think they’re arguing for descriptivism and vice versa.
Mike: I think I’m gonna need you to explain.
Jake: There’s one side (Fennessey, yourself) that wants the Academy to nominate movies casual fans care about. This side thinks they’re pushing for descriptivism, but they’re actually prescribing an artificial solution to make the Oscars seem more “correct.” Meanwhile, the other side (current Academy leadership and probably myself) thinks the Academy is simply doing their job in nominating (i.e. prescribing) what films they think are best according to their own criteria. That latter approach, which we agree has led to insanely flawed results, is still closer to describing how Hollywood actually thinks of itself, which is the whole purpose of the awards as I understand it. Now if we want to say the Oscars should change their entire raison d’être, that’s a whole new argument.
The funny thing is Academy leadership has tried to move towards what you’re saying by juicing their own constituency to skew younger, more diverse, etc. But that hasn’t changed a thing because no matter their age, race, or demo, Academy members are by and large pretentious, tasteless elitists who will never admit that Scream is better than The English Patient. And I hope they never do. Because then it wouldn’t be an Academy vote, it would be a fan vote…And then it wouldn’t be the Oscars, it would be the People’s Choice Awards.
Mike: I disagree with your last point, but I, too, find something endearing about the Academy’s commitment to being hopelessly out of touch. I just think it makes them look like they don’t have the authority they claim.
Jake: I mean, the most important thing to keep in perspective about all of this is that the Oscars don’t actually matter AT ALL if we’re talking purely in terms of what movies are good vs. bad. And they’ve never been a reliable indicator of what’s popular or what gets canonized, either. So when we get mad about them every year it’s kind of a joke because no one will remember what won in five years, anyway.
Mike: And yet, has this not become an important part of each Oscar season? In some ways, even everyone’s favorite part?
Jake: It’s a fun little merry-go-round, isn’t it? I think the real heart of your and Fennessey’s argument is that you wish the Oscars had more of a historical commitment rather than just a political one. And I agree with that. But even if they did, we’d still find ways to disagree with the results. Besides, isn’t it our job (or at least our pleasure) to suss out all the discrepancies later on? We may never get the Oscars we want, but we’ll always have the Oscars we deserve.
The Bullpen 