by Nathan Stout
Ok, I just found out that the Academy Awards is crap.
I just ran across an article that tells you who votes for the best movie, best actor, etc…
Let me just preface by telling you I was assuming the Academy Awards were given out by critics.
WRONG…
The majority group of the 5,700 voters are… actors.
Actors should have no part in voting for the Academy Awards. Is it just me or am I being weird about it?
The other big thing is that the awards are voted for by people involved in making movies…
To me that’s wrong. Am I just being too picky here? Maybe the voters should be critics and retired people from the field…
It’s all a money game anyway. What’s the point of winning one of these? You get to stamp it on the DVD packaging on the next print run. You also get more money when you get hired for some other ‘re-imagining’.
Did you know they are making a ‘re-imaginig’ of Gilligan’s Island. Oh the ignomy. “Skippppperrrr!”
Oh well, what do you expect from the Film Actor’s Guild?
The Academy Awards have always been about the industry honoring it's own. Any problems with its procedure are really about its perception within the culture as being the last word on the merits of a movie or an artist. Here's why I think that might be.
(1)It's the oldest of the awards still being handed out. It predates the Golden Globes by 15 years, the Directors Guild Awards by 9 years, the Independent Spirit Awards by 55 years, and the SAG Awards by 65 years.
(2)It is a lavish ceremony attended by a lot of well-known faces. This gives it a good television value. Incidentally it's the longest televised awards, predating the Golden Globes by 5 years. The Golden Globes was only televised locally in the LA area until 1964, a full 11 years after the Academy Awards had been nationally televised.
Without a lot of serious competition in the public sphere, the Academy Awards were for so long THE awards. The other awards were johnny-come-latelies that have not been able to break the perception as being second tier awards, their primary value as being a predictor for what the Academy might do.
The Academy changing it's procedure so that they are voted on by film scholars and critics is never going to happen because that would change what the award is supposed to be about. It's like having a band that is legally allowed to use the name Lynyrd Skynyrd but contains no members of the original lineup. If you're interested in awards that are voted on by film critics there are several of those. There's the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, The Loutzenhiser Awards, The London Film Critics' Circle, The San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards, etc.