On my indifference to the Oscars

Watching the Oscars was to me, for a long time, a “family tradition”. But this year, I’m utterly indifferent—the ceremony is in 4 days but I haven’t seen any of the films. 

Among the Best Picture nominees, I might watch Drive My Car (because it’s Japanese), Belfast (because I love Kenneth Branagh’s Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing), and The Power of the Dog (because I liked Jane Campion’s The Piano, though it was a long time ago and I don’t know if I would still like it now), but Drive My Car is the only film I may watch any time soon, even if it’s based on a story by Haruki Murakami. Licorice Pizza intrigues me a bit, because it’s directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, but I think he is hit-and-miss (hits: There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread, Boogie Nights, Magnolia; misses: The Master, Inherent Vice, and worst, Punch-Drunk Love). 

As for the rest, Dune isn’t my thing; West Side Story doesn’t interest me (I haven’t even seen the original, though I will); I won’t watch Don’t Look Up because of my dislike of Adam McKay’s Vice and The Big Short; and I haven’t heard of CODA, King Richard, nor Nightmare Alley. 

When we look at films nominated for other awards, the only films I have seen are Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, and I didn’t like either. If anything, I’d like The Tragedy of Macbeth to win Best Cinematography and Best Production Design, because it’s excellent (the cinematography should make people realise that Roma and Mank shouldn’t have won), but the nomination for Denzel Washington as Macbeth is a joke.

But why am I indifferent to the Oscars, especially considering my film background? 

There are three main reasons. First of all, American cinema is dead—it’s over. Mainstream Hollywood is dominated by franchises and superhero nonsense, crushing to death mid-budget films. For a long time, people have complained about the lack of originality in Hollywood, but it’s so much worse today, with remakes and reboots and sequels and prequels and origin stories and spin-offs dominating the market. The star system in Hollywood has been slowly replaced with the franchise system. 

The more “artistic” films in Hollywood are meanwhile distorted and ruined by political agendas.

For a while, I have had problems with modern (American) films, partly because they tend to move the camera for no reason and cut quickly for fear of boring the audience, and partly because film dialogue is now much reduced in quality. When you’re used to films such as A Star Is Born (1954), Casablanca, Room at the Top, The Heiress, Chinatown, or Billy Wilder’s films, in which every line is perfect and many are unforgettable, you can’t help noticing that film dialogue today is mostly banal and corny, often inane, and full of exposition. And it becomes much worse when distorted by politics. 

The second reason for my indifference is to do with the awards. After The Shape of Water won Best Picture in 2017, I could no longer take the Oscars seriously. Adding to that was the Best Cinematography for Life of Pi in 2012, Roma in 2018, and Mank in 2021. Others may mention the Best Editing Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody, which was shocking. These are just a few examples. 

In recent years, I can’t help thinking, and I’m not the only one, that the Oscars are no longer about best films, but about the worthiest films—films about the most important social issues, with the most important political messages. With the move to make the Oscars more diverse and the announcement about quotas, the awards would just become worse and worse. People don’t seem to realise that with such policies and such announcements, any non-white winner would be seen as winning because of “diversity” and not because of merit, and the awards themselves would become less prestigious, and reduced in value. 

It’s similar to the way they now mix up Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film (now called Best International Feature Film): it’s seen as a progressive move, celebrating non-English language films in the Best Picture category, but it’s actually much more insulting to cinema around the world because the Best Picture category is still dominated by American films, as though 9 of the 10 best films of the year are in English and only one film from the rest of the world made it to top 10. 

And finally, I no longer want to watch the ceremony. My mom and I watched the Oscars for years because we liked watching people getting celebrated for their achievements, but now the ceremony is heavily political, performative, and self-congratulatory. Now all I see is rich celebrities getting onstage and making self-absorbed speeches, satisfied with how socially conscious and progressive and tolerant they are, not knowing that they don’t live in the real world and don’t know about any problems faced by normal people. Last year I watched the ceremony, despite having seen only Nomadland, The Father, Mank, and Minari, and it was insufferable. I watched it and couldn’t help thinking of the quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” 

When I look at the way ratings for the Oscars have been going down and down over the years, I know I’m not alone.