I would like to say to the Academy that if I ever make a movie successful and the backed company rich enough to get me a nomination, this is all in jest and I mean none of it. Thank you for your consideration, you can click away now.
Now that they’re gone, we can get down to it. To keep it simple, I’m focusing on the Academy Awards, but let it be known that I have not trusted an awards show since Game of Thrones won the Emmy for best Drama two years in a row, or since Dear Evan Hansen won the Tony for Best Musical in 2017 over Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. I was especially unsurprised when Joker received the most nominations out of any other movie this year of 2020. I form hard opinions about things and when they don’t get selected as the best of the best (when they clearly are), I get pretty upset.
It’s not because I’m always right, especially when it comes to pop culture tastes. I think the first Twilight movie is a work of art and Revenge of the Sith is one of the best Star Wars films. I get upset for the same reason everyone gets upset. Art is subjective. It is nuanced, and it is nearly impossible to take the hundreds of movies released in any given year and pick out the very best of them all.
Even if you narrowed it down to the best nine movies of the year, how do you decide which one is the best? Some are comedies, some are romances, some are action, sci-fi, thriller, or drama. Each genre or subgenres carries with it its own expectations, traditions and styles. Can you really put a drama like Marriage Story up against an action-packed war film like 1917 up against each other? You just can’t. They’re different. Different people will like them.
And the thing is, even if it were possible to find the best nine movies released in a year and decide which one is objectively the very best of them all in every way, that’s still not how awards shows work. There is money involved in every campaign for a nomination or win, there are gifts sent to judges, and there are judges that definitely don’t watch every movie nominated.
This isn’t to say that there is no point to awards shows. They can be used to give a platform to important issues within and outside of the industry, they can give recognition to the people behind the scenes that make all entertainment so entertaining, and most importantly, they give us memes.
So.
Many.
Memes.
I’m not saying that awards shows aren’t fun or that you shouldn’t watch them. I’m saying that they are surface level, shiny shows that usually drag on for too long. So if a movie you hated wins and your top pick loses, it doesn’t mean you have bad taste. It just means that a small set of people liked the movie that won (or it was the only one they watched.)