When the Academy Awards aired in 2007, I had not seen any of the Best Picture nominees (all but one were rated R), I was oblivious to the politics of expensive campaigns and voter-schmoozing, and I assumed, beyond all doubt, that Jennifer Hudson’s emotional Supporting Actress acceptance speech was a fundamental testament to the glory of Oscar victory. “Choking up is non-negotiable,” writes Anthony Lane, in a post-Oscars debrief published in The New Yorker on Monday. “Anything less will be deemed insulting by the Academy and filed away as unforgivable.” Filed away by my seven-year-old self as unforgivable, too, I suspect.
In the decade or so since third grade, when the Oscars still appeared to me to genuinely reflect the glamour of Hollywood, its possibilities and significance, I have become a lot more educated about the way the Academy Awards work. For starters, I now watch the majority of the films. The clips that capture each acting nominee’s performance once provided the basis for my judgment of their merit—I was enthralled by the mini-episodes, their seeming indication, often inaccurate, of a larger thematic narrative in the feature length version of the film they represented. I remember watching Natalie Portman overcome with joy in an elevator; she had just won the part of Odette in Swan Lake (and was about to win Best Actress for Black Swan). I assumed innocence, a straightforward tale of the ballet world. “That’s not what the movie is like at all,” my mother told me.
Now I know which movies are good, and which aren’t, which deserve to win, and which don’t. I’m not going to lament why Green Book was a horrendous choice for Best Picture, because there are many articles that already do so. I will voice my surprise and delight at Olivia Colman’s Best Actress upset win for The Favourite, because I have grown accustomed to the “career achievement” Oscar, doled out most recently to Leonardo Dicaprio, and, before him, Julianne Moore. Glenn Close seemed poised to finally end her decades-long dry spell (she is now still the biggest living loser), only I, and too many voters, were infatuated with Colman’s delirious and devastating portrayal of a queen out of touch with her country, but perhaps not her emotions.
I am now aware of the war waged by studios and their teams, to sink rival contenders’ chances of winning. The #MeToo movement was notable not just for its indictment of sexual predators in the entertainment industry, but also for its elimination of Harvey Weinstein from a world over which he reigned supreme. His leadership of Miramax, and then the Weinstein Company, ushered in an era of awards seasons defined by expensive dinners, private galas, merchandising and strong-arming, all to gain votes for films that might otherwise have floundered. Weinstein notably propelled unknown actors to stardom and indie pictures to mainstream success, often through Academy recognition. The only man thanked more than him in Oscars acceptance speeches is Steven Spielberg.
A July release can never maintain frontrunner status. Period pieces wield ever-powerful advantages The on-again, off-again preferential ballot will often produce “liked” champions rather than loved ones. I never used to track precursor ceremonies, the guild decisions, the telling omissions in the Film Editing or Director categories, which some say are no longer useful but which sometimes work and consequently remain points of discussion. History did appear to trounce Roma, which battled the entire lack of Foreign Language Best Picture winners in the Academy’s 91-year history, among other obstacles, to little avail. These days, I am obsessed with everything it takes, or doesn’t take (in Green Book’s case, a need to remedy various guffaws made by the film’s cast and crew) to end the season with the industry’s supposed top honor. Yet maybe I am too hungry a consumer of the punditry and speculation widely available across journalistic platforms. Maybe that sucks away part of my childhood delight, at entrusting faith in a process that looked perfect from the red carpet, where actresses from vastly different cinematic universes glided past each other in pastel dresses and Bulgari jewelry.
Apart from the arduous period that begins with the Venice Film Festival (or Cannes, depending on who you ask) and ends between late February and early March, the sheen of Hollywood in general has grown more superficial, less representative of the industry at large, which still thrives, though in a far different fashion from when the Academy was founded, and when I started watching the Oscars. Netflix is a player, of course, upending norms while occupying hallowed office buildings on studio lots, whose main contemporary purposes are to drive tourism. The outsourcing of production to states with tax breaks means that Los Angeles no longer encapsulates every step of the nostalgic motion picture ideal: driving from soundstage to editing suite to Grauman’s premiere. Much of television is a lot better than traditional cinema. Disney is currently eating alive one of the major six Hollywood studios—already a miniscule number!—and even though most already belonged to conglomerates as positively un-alluring as cable or phone service providers, the fact remains that we likely will no longer hear the familiar fanfare or see that statue of iconic “20th Century Fox” text before movies. Or maybe we still will, only with the shadow of Sleeping Beauty Castle looming.
I guess I am hoping (as vain as that may be), for a sign that an objective still exists, to strive for success as a filmmaker, an actor, a producer. The Oscars have forever in my mind been such a concrete and fantastical embodiment of triumph, the true signifier of “making it,” always deeply respected, as much as those high-minded critics ranted and raved. Box office profits really have soared after films’ Best Picture wins, and careers have been sustained for years after first taking hold of that little golden man. Recent post-nomination and post-win analysis of nominated and winning films’ commercial performances has resulted in uncertain consensus on whether or not victory is still worth the obscene amounts of money spent on Oscar campaigns. It is true that, despite 2017’s viewership lows, tens of millions of people watch the ceremony around the world, and are likely influenced by its results. But less and less so. No one should approach a career dreaming too nonsensically about someday ascending the Dolby stage, but to suppose that any Hollywood hopeful neglects to dream such a dream is itself nonsensical. And realizing that Hollywood’s ultimate standard for quality no longer means what it once did, that people are losing interest, after growing up with my eyes inches from the television screen on every fateful annual afternoon, is really, really difficult. But so are a lot of things in 2019.
Fergus Campbell is a freshman in Columbia College.