We are neck-deep in one of the most chaotic times of the year — film awards season. With it comes the annual occurrence of fans protesting that a billion-dollar major blockbuster that has not been nominated for Best Picture should have been. And these protests make us question the validity and value of the Oscars. 

The Oscars — formally the Academy Awards — are considered Hollywood’s biggest night, in which awards are handed out to honour film achievements from the last year in categories including acting, directing, and writing, as well as technical categories such as editing, cinematography, production design, and score.

For those who are unaware, Spider-Man: No Way Home was not nominated for Best Picture, much to the dismay of fans who believe that it is unquestionably the best film of the year. This only exacerbated their belief that the academy has a vendetta against superhero movies, a belief that has gained more and more traction since director Martin Scorsese expressed his opinion that Marvel movies are not cinema.

I have made the brave decision to answer the question on every film fan, critic and Spider-Man: No Way Home superfan’s mind — “Do the Academy Awards mean anything?” My answer is both yes and no. 

It’s complicated. See, it’s hard to wade into the discourse surrounding the Academy Awards without also talking about the future of movie-going, public consumption and demand, along with taking a side in the Marvel vs. Martin Scorsese drama — for the record, I’m with Marty. 

Nevertheless, I will try my best.

To make it simple, the Academy Awards don’t matter in terms of objective merit because the awards are voted on by an academy made up of thousands of subjective voters. It’s important to remember that one subjective opinion does not discredit others. To use a personal example, in 2020, Jojo Rabbit won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars over Little Women. 

Do I think that Greta Gerwig, writer and director of Little Women, wrote the superior screenplay and should have won the award? Absolutely. Do I think it was the best of the year? 100 percent. Did I cry when she didn’t win? Yes, I did. 

But the voting body of the academy thought differently. Jojo Rabbit winning does not make my opinion that Little Women was better any less valid. And for the record, I also love Jojo Rabbit.

So while the Academy Awards are the subjective opinion of the academy, they absolutely do matter.

To grossly over-simplify things, the awful reality of the current box office trends is that people, with few exceptions, only really show up in large numbers for superhero films, horror flicks and star-studded adventure movies. The low audience turnout leaves mid-to-big budget adult dramas and independent films in the dust. The Academy Awards are important because they shine a spotlight on these films and give studios a reason to fund these crucial cinematic projects. 

The week of its 12 Oscar nominations, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog saw an uptick of 5.46 million viewing hours. That’s huge. I highly doubt that its views would be as high had it not been for its incredible performance on nomination day. If not for the Oscars, Campion would have had a much harder time convincing producers that The Power of the Dog was a good idea. 

Without the Oscars, studios don’t have a lot of incentives to pay to make movies that are going to lose money. This is why the Oscars matter so much. They are helping save cinema. 

It is also important to remember that the Academy Awards are a celebration of cinema, not of box-office grosses. This is why I am glad that Spider-Man: No Way Home wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. Just because it made over a billion dollars and the nostalgia was magical does not mean that, from a craft perspective, it is necessarily worthy of the title of “Best Picture of the Year.” In my opinion, it isn’t. 

In the end, I love the Academy Awards because I think that their pros far outweigh their cons, and I believe in cinema. It is magical and wonderful and needs to be celebrated.

—

This op-ed was written by a University of Saskatchewan undergraduate student and reflects the views and opinions of the writer. If you would like to write a reply, please email opinions@thesheaf.com. Rebecca Lischynski is a first-year undergraduate student studying in the College of Arts and Science. She loves movies, musicals and movie musicals. 

Photo: dorahon via Creative Commons