As an enthusiastic lover of the cinema and an avid follower of news in the film industry, I knew this year’s Academy Awards ceremony was doomed from the start.
“Why,” you ask? In February of this year, when the Academy announced this year’s nominees in all of the different categories, they also announced that they would not be televising all 23 categories.
The announcement stated that eight categories—”Best Documentary Short,” “Best Sound,” “Best Film Editing,” “Best Makeup and Hairstyling,” “Best Live Action Short,” “Best Production Design” and “Best Animation Short”— would be cut from the main ceremony.
To many film lovers, like myself, this was a huge red flag.
The Oscars are supposed to be a celebration of film as an artform. It is a time when directors, writers, actors and crew members involved in the filmmaking process can be honored for their amazing work and talent.
The awards are presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which ensures that the people making the important decisions about the ceremony are, themselves, members of the industry and lovers of the medium.
What I cannot wrap my head around is how lovers of the cinema are so okay with not giving the nominees within these eight categories the same amount of respect and attention as the nominees in the other 15 categories.
Why did they make the decision to cut these eight categories? Is there not enough time to present all 23 categories over the course of 3 hours? This couldn’t possibly be an issue since all 23 categories have been presented within that time frame in the past.
So, the answer must be that the producers of the ceremony found the categories to be too uninteresting for a mainstream TV audience. This makes me wonder when the Oscars became more about audience ratings than about the art of the motion picture.
What is meant to be a fun-and-celebratory yet dignified-and-respectful ceremony has turned into a celebrity-filled spectacle where “entertainment” is prioritized over honoring filmmakers and crew members that are integral to the industry.
Some of you might argue with me, saying that they did show clips of the winners of those categories and that they therefore did pay respect to the nominees of those eight categories. This may be so, but I wish to point out that the clips of the acceptance speeches given by the winners of categories were cut down to be 30 seconds or less.
They were quite literally not given the time of day, or in this case, night.
Looking back on it now, I feel even angrier than I felt when I initially found out about the decision to cut the categories.
Getting rid of the eight categories bought the producers a lot of extra time to do things that they deem more “interesting.” So, what did they end up doing with the extra time?
They filled it with unfunny skits and jokes and unnecessary extra categories like “Ultimate Cheer Moment,” or “Fan Favorites.” I could write whole articles about all of the unfunny and awkward moments at the ceremony, or about how these two categories were created just to please the extremely vocal Marvel fans.
The ironic thing about these “fun” additions to the Oscar itinerary is that the ceremony still ran over time, even with the eight categories being cut. The end result was not only long and awfully cringe-worthy at times, but also not a faithful tribute to the film industry and its contributors.
I hope the Academy and the producers of the Oscars learn from this failure of a ceremony next year. Ideally, they would return to presenting all 23 categories on air and organize the ceremony much better because that sounds like the Oscars that nominees, filmmakers and cinephiles around the world deserve.