If I ever win an Oscar, I would probably never stop boasting about it. I would start every conversation with “Well, as an Oscar winner...” and carry around in my wallet signed photographs of me proudly holding my statue to hand out to everybody I meet.
But that’s just me.
As a very unlikely winner, I can take some solace in the fact that looking back at some 80 years’ worth of Academy Awards out there, it comes as no surprise that winning an Oscar has increasingly become nothing more than getting a shiny new paperweight.
The whole process and hoo-ha surrounding it has become way too contrived.
There are hardly any surprises left. If you make a movie and you make sure to include either a transvestite, a retarded person or any form of physical transformation involving Meryl Streep, your movie is a shoe in come Oscar night.
But as a kinda-sorta expert on the whole world of movies, I can assure you: these days winning that golden statue does not mean you are the best guy in town.
Getting an Oscar has become just another business transaction in Hollywood. I’m in no ways parley to that glamorous crowd, but as a spectator it is not hard to fathom what strings nominees need to pull in order to win.
There are about 6,000 members in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the governing body overseeing the whole awards ceremony.
All 6,000 members vote in all 24 categories to determine a winner. This means an editor votes for a director of photography who votes for a costume designer that knows nothing about sound design but still votes for the technician they think probably ought to win.
It’s nothing more than a skewered effort where members of the Academy long stopped caring about voting objectively. Rather: it’s all about what film stands out as that years’ ‘clear winner’.
They can try as hard as they want to, but excellent films like Captain Phillips and Philomena, that was nominated for Best Picture this year, never stood a chance against the likes of 12 Years a Slave. A movie based on slavery featuring a transformative performance? Yea, it probably won the Oscar even before filming started.
Being so predictable all the time means that the Oscar’s often make horrible mistakes. Case in point: awarding the Best Picture award in 1999 to Shakespeare in Love rather than Saving Private Ryan.
It’s all about the buzz and creating awareness about you and your film beforehand.
The voters don’t judge films based on merit anymore. Famed Hollywood magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, annually gives its readers a glimpse into the voting process by having a tête-à-tête with some director or editor during the voting process.
This is often quite revealing. For example, shortly before last year’s ceremony, they interviewed an Academy member who was discussing the nominees for Best Actress. Specifically nine year old Quvenzhané Wallis was being discussed. Wallis, with no prior acting experience, made history when she became one of the youngest nominees ever for her performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Instead of evaluating the merits of her performance against the other nominees, this Academy member was quoted as saying “Quvez---? Quzen---? Quyzenay? I don’t vote for anyone whose name I can’t pronounce. Her parents really put her in a hole by giving her that name.”
This just goes to show how this whole process is actually a farce. Winning an Oscar does not constitute having the most talent; sometimes it merely means something as arbitrary as having a pronounceable name.
I suppose it would be counterintuitive to disregard the Oscars completely. They still make for a fun night in front of the telly hoping somebody would trip and fall on their way to the stage.
Since the trial of Oscar Pistorius is drawing to a close, maybe it’s time to put the eponymous Oscars back on trial and reassess all your favourite winners to see if they are truly so deserving off all the “praise” they received.
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