Will Smith from Concussion. Photo courtesy Sony Pictures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>If I was king of the Oscars, the competition for best actor this year would be a two-man race between Michael Fassbender and Will Smith. If I\u2019d been in charge of handing out awards last year, I would\u2019ve given them all to Selma<\/em>. The fact that David Oyelowo wasn\u2019t even nominated for his superlative embodiment of Martin Luther King Jr. is, honestly, a little nuts.<\/p>\nBut do those sorts of omissions qualify\u00a0for\u00a0a boycott?<\/p>\n
Smith (who should\u2019ve been nominated for his work in Concussion<\/em>) will be staying home on Oscars night. \u201cWe\u2019re part of this community but at this current time, we\u2019re uncomfortable to stand there and say that this is OK,\u201d he told ABC News, regarding the Oscar\u2019s second-straight year of an all-white acting docket. He\u2019s joining director Spike Lee and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, in a boycott of the Oscars. Others may follow, and there\u2019s been pressure on Chris Rock to step down as the ceremony\u2019s emcee.<\/p>\nI understand the frustration. It sounds like, in light of the pressure, the Academy will be tinkering with the Oscars to foster more diversity in its nominees, and maybe that\u2019ll help.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s be honest: Oscar\u2019s playing field has always been about as level as a cut-rate skate park. How can you straighten something that\u2019s inherently\u2014and by design\u2014crooked?<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong: I love the Oscars. But there\u2019s nothing fair about them. Any sort of authority they have is illusory. Can anyone really objectively say that, say, Spotlight <\/em>is \u201cbetter\u201d than The Revenant<\/em> (or that either are better, for that matter, than Inside Out)<\/em>? That Brie Larson\u2019s performance in Room<\/em> was \u201cbetter\u201d than Cate Blanchett\u2019s in Carol<\/em>? How do you tally this sort of excellence? How do you quantify it? You can\u2019t. It\u2019s utterly, completely and unfairly<\/em> subjective. There is no scoring system in play here, no touchdowns or triple lutzes to track. You can\u2019t compare the glowering stares of Larson and Blanchett and crown a winner between the two.<\/p>\nFilms are works of art. Creating them is an organic, imprecise, process. It is not a science. It is not a sport. And as such, the appreciation of them is also subjective. The awards given out on Oscar night are, yes, statements of artistic quality, but they\u2019re also wildly irrational choices based on what speaks to voters, what moves <\/em>them. Socio-political leanings factor into the mix. Petty annoyances and personality quirks become a factor. It\u2019s not the Academy\u2019s fault: I know when I consider a movie, I\u2019m not judging it in a vacuum. What sort of day I\u2019m having can impact how I feel about a certain movie in that moment. But I doubt the Academy\u2019s voters are, really, that much different than I am.<\/p>\nWe all know this, of course. We all know the Academy is, at best, a flawed judge of top-of-the-heap movie quality. Consider: Citizen Kane<\/em>, widely considered the best American movie ever made, won a single Academy Award: Best original screenplay. Consider: Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar. Anyone have a hankering to rewatch 2005\u2019s best picture winner Crash<\/em>? Thought not. And yet subconsciously, we give the Academy some strange taste-making power that it doesn\u2019t have and, frankly, might not even claim. We feel that these awards\u2014as weird and as subjective as they are\u2014are important enough to boycott for not being fair.<\/p>\nSo say the Academy makes changes to the system\u2014changes that, again, may indeed be warranted. Say they make a concerted effort to include more minorities in Oscar voting. That might help more minorities be in awards contention, but is that any guarantee that the Oscars telecast look any more fair in terms of the actual quality of the nominees? Wouldn\u2019t those new voters still be using the very same subjective criteria in judging quality that, essentially, we all use.<\/p>\n
And really, is this yearly carnival of Hollywood self-congratulations a worthy civil rights issue? The right to work, the right to attend a quality school, the right to walk the streets without fear of getting shot\u2014these feel like important issues worthy of national attention and consideration. The right to stick a statuette on the fireplace mantel of one\u2019s mansion in Brentwood \u2026 that feels less pressing to me.<\/p>\n
The Oscars are fun to watch. I\u2019m sure they\u2019re really fun to get. But as any real measure of quality, they\u2019re almost meaningless. To boycott the Oscars is to further imbue them with an authority that they don\u2019t really have. An authority they\u2019ve never had.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If I was king of the Oscars, the competition for best actor this year would be a two-man race between Michael Fassbender and Will Smith. If I\u2019d been in charge of handing out awards last year, I would\u2019ve given them all to Selma. The fact that David Oyelowo wasn\u2019t even nominated for his superlative embodiment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2036,"featured_media":988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[119,325,7,128],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-awards","tag-boycott","tag-oscar-winner","tag-oscars"],"yoast_head":"\n
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