Thoughts about The Academy Award

The Academy Award – the most prominent ceremony of film industry became more about contenting people’s expectations rather than about films itself, during the recent years. While each year, the Oscar introduces more and more films where the theme comes before the cinematographic techniques, it suddenly came to the point where The Oscar became highly politicised and prioritised to raise mainstream social issues. Such films are being given advantage, while films having nothing in common with social issues become underrated.

The Academy Award has its own standard to judge a film, based on the ideology of the country and by non-written rules of Hollywood-standardised blockbusters. During the last few decades America experienced a boost of social movements for raising awareness of the nation. Social movements dedicated to racism, sexual orientation and feminism became mainstream, hence the films covering such topics become more popular. The Academy prioritises films with such background and each year more films are being introduced, while the jury had to choose which one would win -- the neglected black person, the tortured woman or the humiliated gay. It may seem that films like “Get Out”, “Green Book”, “12 Years of Slavery” and “Crash” eager to present racism as an issue from various angles, but they actually fail, always capturing blacks as the “good guys”, putting stereotypical white Americans on the negative side of the story.

Films are always about a story and how it is going to be told. There are films with revolutionary plot-line and sublime cinematography nominated each year, which introduce new approach in telling a story, but rather stay under the shadow of mainstream movies. Films should never be judged based on the theme or socio-political context. Themes must be secondary as opposed to the work done by the director and production department. “Dunkirk” gave the audience a whole new understanding of film about warfare. While the story was an ordinary battle of World War II, the entire approach of the film differed with its unusual establishment of the characters and key plot resolutions. However, the film didn’t quite record a huge success, as the whole attention went to the films with feministic message in the 90th Oscar ceremony. In 2017 “Arrival” completely changed understanding of the films about aliens. Shifting it into philosophical contexts, won only one out of eight nomination, while the title of the best picture was given to the story about black gay fellow. Approximately six years ago, the Academy was accused of being too white but now, the extreme praising of black become ridiculously illogical.

Certainly, this does not mean that the Academy should eliminate films about socially controversial topic and concentrate only on politically neutral type of films. As films have more or less impact on society’s vision of the world, we should not completely keep such films aside. “Dallas Buyers Club” introduced highly controversial story about transgenders but it didn’t rather stick only on the damaged psychology of gays rather than questioned more important theme of the concept of life and death. Not to mention the professionalism shown by the actors. It doesn’t matter whether there were hundreds and thousands of films shot about gays but rather the original approach of film while telling the story, which became the essence of its success.

The Academy Award must always cherish the newest approach in films, being independent from socio-political context. While the Oscar is now in search of its new identity, the thought of contenting America’s expectations must pay little attention to and concentrate on the most important – judging films without any prejudice but as pure art.