Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
The spectacle of the awards has come to eclipse the other activities of the Academy. Last year the event is estimated to have hauled in $100 million in ad revenue. This is not to say its new cause is not any more worthy. Writing on the 2012 telecast, New Yorker critic Anthony Lane likened the whole thing to "teenage sex": "It's all about the fizzing buildup, and the self-persuading aftermath," he observed, a fizz that's only been encouraged by the internet over the past ten years. "The dafter the matter in hand," he wrote, "the more swollen the spleen of our opinions."But even without an anti-union agenda and the inflated apparatus, the fact that the Academy is essentially the NRA of movies has led to all kinds of horrible decisions over the years. Studio dynamics, and a general sense that one has a duty to support what's best for business, are the only way to account for the fact that Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Altman never won best director, or the fact that a movie like Forrest Gump won over Pulp Fiction. Anyone over the age of 12 should have a memory of some year where a truly bizarre movie swept the Academy Awards for reasons that are completely inexplicable unless you work for a studio.This year more people are finally paying attention to how old, white, conservative, and frankly boring the Academy is, and that's great. But it's important to remember that each Oscar statuette only costs around $100 to make. To us, the moviegoing public that subsidizes all the surrounding glamour, the award should never appear to be much more valuable than that.Follow Dan on Twitter."I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them."