For all the people in the notes like “that wasn’t already a rule?!” Nope! It seems pretty obvious, but yeah there was nothing stopping anyone from just watching nothing and voting based on vibes.
This has literally ALWAYS been the case for animation. Year after year they’d release comments to the effect of “yeah animation is for kids so i just picked the Disney one/the one my kid liked.” Leading to animated films that were uncontested masterworks of the craft losing to Big Hero Six.
But the last decade it’s become increasingly obvious how little the academy voters actually give a shit about film, despite ostensibly being industry professionals, regularly snubbing foreign films or minority led films in a super transparent manner. The “campaigning” (read: bribery) that high budget films do and the prevalence of “oscar bait” continue to demonstrate the immense gap between academy voters and even mainstream audiences, let alone people who actually give a shit about film as a medium.
In 2012 the academy membership was 94% white, 77% male, 86% age 50 or older, and had a median age of 62.
Despite very public efforts to “diversify” membership— about half the board of governors was female in 2020– they’ve yet to demonstrate anything but the most grudging, minimal commitment to change.
Leading everyone to conclude “ah, so this was all a joke to you then. So all the pomp and circumstance was a circus routine. Fuck this then.” and they stopped watching. Important non us filmmakers stopped even submitting because why bother? The oscar’s viewing numbers have been plummeting for a while but they were still trying to blame it on the death of cable.
Apparently they’re now desperate enough to do the bare fucking minimum of watching the films they’ve been pretending to have the authority to judge.
kianamaiart
gamechangershow
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
