The Academy Awards (also known as the Oscars) are some of the most prestigious prizes that can be awarded to those working in the film industry, with the 94th annual ceremony taking place at the end of March 2022. They are presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and have been running since 1929. The Oscars have been riddled with controversies for years, with many claiming the voting process is rigged and pointing out the exclusivity and lack of diversity within the Hollywood-centred circle of people who run the awards. How true do these claims remain in 2022, and what has been done to ensure fair decisions when it comes to which films and movie stars influence our culture?
Winners of the Oscars receive an iconic golden trophy in recognition of acting talent, cinematography, musical scores and more, achieving success through a voting system including thousands of people. However, this system has been criticised in recent years for the repetitive, predictable nature of its population, with many calling for the need to introduce a more varied and inclusive community to pick out the best candidates. In 2016, the Academy failed to present any non-white acting nominees for the second year running, prompting the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite to go viral (Dibdin & Fletcher, 2021). According to The Los Angeles Times, ‘Oscar voters were on average 63 years old. 76% of them were men, and 94% of them were white’, highlighting a lack of diversity that has historically been an issue in the entertainment industry. Racism has particularly been prevalent, with even Marlon Brando turning down an award for Best Actor in The Godfather in 1973, citing the ‘“poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry”’ as his reason (Compendio, 2021).
Several celebrities boycotted the ceremony and as such the Academy promised to ‘double its number of women and diverse members by 2020’, inviting an additional 683 members to join the team in 2016 of which 41% were people of colour and almost half were women (Dibdin & Fletcher, 2021). In the years that followed, the expansion continued. Have these recent changes made a noticeable difference to who wins the awards or levelled the playing field in any way for the Oscars? Furthermore, has the voting system ever been truly fair?
In 2018, almost 8,500 voters were involved in the process of selecting the nominees and winners of the Oscars (Jilani, 2018). This number has risen to more than 9,000 today. Although critics and professionals will always have a different consensus than much of the general population, it is fair to say that this is a substantial number of people and as such will include a variety of different tastes. From active indie producers to high-ranking actors, mostly based in America, voters are chosen from an array of fields within the film industry and cast their votes under RCV (ranked-choice voting). This is an electoral system in which voters list their preferred candidates in the order they see fit. Because there is hardly ever one obvious winner who attracts the highest number of votes in each category, the Oscars can be a tight and competitive race; the RCV system benefits those close cases where second- or even third-preference votes can make all the difference.
This ensures that choices that may not look incredibly popular at first glance can stand a chance. Additionally, if there was a movie up for nominations that stood out among the rest, it would certainly need the support of the majority of the voting population to win anything. The only groups in which you would need over 100 individual votes to even be nominated are the Best Picture category and four acting categories (Dibdin & Fletcher, 2021).
In more subjective arguments, controversy within the Academy Awards can stem from the winners themselves. One person’s taste in movies will never be exactly the same as another’s, and while some insist that certain actors are deserving of their trophies, others ‘believe there were better contenders that year’ (Compendio, 2021), particularly if a contestant has been involved in any sort of scandal or production drama. For example, the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody won Best Editing in 2019 despite the director Bryan Singer being fired due to accusations of sexual assault (Compendio, 2021). On the other hand, some cynics even claim that the enormous amount of advertising and campaigning in recent years equates to unfair advantages.
The Oscars have always and will always be a source of controversy due to the subjective nature of taste. However, the recent uptake in a more diverse crowd leading the voting process has been refreshing representation for many, and we can be assured that the system itself is a fair one. As 2022 marks another year of fantastic achievements for both ultra-famous and up-and-coming showbiz stars, we can all hopefully look forward in anticipation and excitement to see which favourites emerge with a shiny gold trophy.
Figure 1: A collection of Oscar awards, Britannica.
References
Compendio, C. (2021). ‘15 controversial Oscar wins— and how they’ve aged’, Stacker [online]. Available at: https://stacker.com/stories/3816/15-controversial-oscar-wins-and-how-theyve-aged (Accessed 06/03/22).
Dibdin, E & Fletcher, R. (2021). ‘Who votes for the Oscars? The ins and outs of Academy voting explained’, Digital Spy [online]. Available at: https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/oscars/a621921/who-votes-for-the-oscars/ (Accessed 06/03/22).
Jilani, Z. (2018). ‘The Oscars use a more fair voting system than most of America does’, The Intercept [online]. Available at: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/04/oscars-2018-nominations-ranked-choice-voting/ (Accessed 06/03/22).
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