What The Best Picture Oscars Say About Their Era

The Oscars are a joke and the fact that their ratings are going down shows people are finally understanding that. Let’s be honest, though. It’s the fact that the show itself isn’t all that entertaining. It’s just celebrities making speeches and maybe there’s a song & dance or comedy sketch you like and that’s about it. As the celebrities seem to be further dividing themselves from the general public for a host of reasons and the Hollywood system seems to be falling further into their own fakery and egos, it only makes matters worse.

Still being honest, the Academy Awards were always about people in the Hollywood system telling us how awesome they are. Some awards were more controversial than others but now the current culture rage has made it harder to enjoy seeing celebrities gather. We hear about how terrible rich people are…in movies made by people who make more in a day than average workers see in a year, and we’re supposed to believe they’re not the very evil rich people their movies and TV shows talk about. Then there was the slam against animated productions by creating a “best animated movie” category to ensure that the “real movies” (the ones starring them and their faces all over the screen) wouldn’t have to compete with the likes of the good Beauty And The Beast or Shrek. Now you have to hit the right quota of certain people in order to even be nominated, which means the story is not what’s important, if it ever was. It’s about the celebs and now the activists. So why should I care?

Well, according to the host of All Talking Pictures on YouTube there is a very good reason. To make his case we get a look at each winner for Best Picture up to his posting on November 28,2022 and what it tells us about Hollywood at the time. I need to get my schedule back on track and I’m willing to listen to an opposing opinion, though whether it changes mine or not we’ll find out.

Whatever Louis Mayer had planned for the union of business and art, that’s not working out so well. Right now the business side seems to be stifling the artistic side. Let’s not forget their role in bad adaptations. They don’t keep the right egos in check and try to create a good adaptation…and some of them aren’t even good stories on their own. The marketing side, with their algorithms and demographics and obsession with celebrity over story (be they actors or directors–no such status for screenplay writers and how many people can remember the names of special effects studios besides ILM and maybe Weta) is also to blame. The business side should have a decent budget and know when and when not to go past it, market the film to the right people, and otherwise let the creatives be creative. Maybe you’d get adaptations by people who care while the people that don’t can go after the stories they actually want to tell. That’s be nice.

Interesting to hear how Hollywood went crazy over Gone With The Wind considering how hard Hollywood today is trying to wipe it from our memories. Then again they’d probably want to get rid of silent movies as well. It’s not just the culture but that there are people in the system who seem to hate their own history, cultural or otherwise. Black and white movies and shows in reruns are rare and reduced to classics channels while remakes almost seem to want to replace the originals even when they aren’t as good.

Since he mentioned it I’m going to do the shameless plug thing and point to my review of Casablanca and how all the homages and parodies ended up taking away from the experience for me by ruining the important details. Not as bad as Pacific Rim was overhyped to the point I actually enjoyed the sequel more, but it still weakened the experience.

I’m curious what his thoughts are on why television had more of an impact that radio shows did? Was it the addition of the visuals? People used to get their entertainment from radio shows, and some TV shows (General Hospital, Gunsmoke, and The Lone Ranger all come to mind) started in the radio days. General Hospital I believe even continued its story from what had aired on the radio but I could be wrong. It only comes to mind as it was my mother’s favorite soap opera and the only one she couldn’t miss each weekday. There were kids shows, family shows, shows just for mom and dad, the news, and everything television has now except music…until MTV came along anyway, and even that’s been reduced to niche channels and radio streaming through the cable box and streaming services with streaming channels like Stingray. The only place to hear old radio shows now is through the Internet Archive or websites using their audio embeds (which I’ve done for a few Saturday Night Showcase installments). Did video really change things that much?

Being “experimentive” doesn’t make it “good”. As someone who is more a “storyphile” than just “cinephile”, and admittedly one drawn to certain genres over others I don’t hear a lot of people talking about Midnight Cowboy, outside of the scene where Dustin Hoffman almost got run over and yet didn’t stop the movie because he’s a professional and knew film was expensive. According to Hoffman the previews didn’t do well and nobody wanted to work on the low-budget picture. The Hollywood crowd loves to show off their acting range and do things they think will emotionally connect, but for general audiences, the people losing interest in the award shows, being entertaining should be first and not everybody wants to watch the story of a gay cowboy prostitute. I know I don’t. I don’t even watch the stuff with women prostitutes unless they band together to fight a bad guy of some kind.

I’m not giving an answer to this. It’s a legit question: is the changes in the 1970s due to the country’s change in view…or Hollywood’s? Hollywood by now is going left, a possible internal cultural response, and Hollywood is certainly its own culture like any other US region…probably why they all think the 1980s was so neon, to the Hayes Code restricting their creativity and the paranoia (just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you) of Senator McCarthy pushing back against Communist infiltration into the American way of life…which let’s be honest, they were. It’s just like most extremists he went too far, as did the Hayes Code by setting up guidelines for all movies instead of something…I’m not sure where to go there. What’s okay for a kids movie maybe? A guide for people with certain tastes to see but people with the tastes that went against the Hayes code also had options?

At any rate, people can only see the movies presented to them. If the directors don’t want to make relaxing or action movies, they usually won’t. If they do, they usually will if they can get studio approval, and that depends on who they talk to as to what movies they want to see. Certain worldviews will partially inform certain tastes. So will just their general preferences as to what they go to a movie for. There’s a reason biopicks aren’t making blockbuster dollars, whether they’re good or not. Francis Ford Coppola wanted George Lucas to direct his movie Apocalypse Now, but Lucas turned it down to make Star Wars. The former is a hit with cinephiles and war movie aficionados and the latter is a cultural phenom so large that Disney bought Lucasfilm just for that and not anything else in their library. What’s a hit in Hollywood is not always as beloved outside of it outside of movie fans. So I ask: if something like Star Wars or Superman: The Movie or a James Bond film was the norm rather than the exception around that period would more people have gone to those movies or where the dark and gritty “America sucks” movies the only option in the drive-ins and movie theaters at the time? Sure, you can find people who enjoy those movies and I could probably drop a few names myself if I watched more movies.

I am certainly not coming down against those films as fan, critic, or creator though most are not my type of movies in either category. I was also a child in the 1970s, born in 1973, so I didn’t really get into movies until I was 5, very late 1970s and of course the 1980s form my kind of movies and I didn’t care what the silly grown-ups were into. It’s possible that’s what the people wanted but it could also be what Hollywood wanted to make and there’s the difference. What would have happened I wonder if Hollywood didn’t overcorrect from the Hayes code and put out more anti-hero movies than, say, the action heroes of the 1980s?

It’s in the 1980s that we see that I’m not the only biased one here. He clearly has his own tastes, and that’s fine. My troubles with 1990s media is more on the comic side than the movie side but if this is where the celebrity ego started going into high gear that’s not a good thing. It would lead to a further disconnect between Hollywood and the rest of America, if not the world. (Look at how many movies in 2023 are being banned in other countries with their own versions of the Hayes code due to religion or the governmental system in place. This included China, which Hollywood loves so much that they’ll drop progressive-pushed scenes and characters from posters to make them happy. Then they made Mulan to show how little they actually understand China.) He just glosses over the 1980s offerings and that’s fine. I’m not condemning him for it, but it does show his biases in this overview.

The 2000s seems to be where we can see that disconnect between Hollywood creators and movie goers. Those more interested in the art than the entertainment will choose movies that didn’t wow the general audiences. It’s fine to make a movie that says something but in Hollywood today you’re movie is wrong if it doesn’t say something. It is great to see more women getting into the director’s chair, though acting like black film directors weren’t already making a strong push (just because I’M not a Spike Lee fan doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the man’s place in opening up diversity of thought and storytelling) is a disservice. Hollywood Shuffle and The Meteor Man are two of my favorite movies and two different approaches to storytelling by Robert Townsend. Everybody loves Wesley Snipes except the IRS and Samuel L. Jackson, Carl Weathers, and I could go on. I’m not sure we need the quota system and I’m convinced quotas cause more racism that it stops, but this isn’t the site to go into that. Not every movie needs to have a message or be some experimental art film. After a rough day at work or taking care of the kids that may not be what your there for. I wish there were more movies for mom and dad to watch with the kids that wasn’t insulting everyone’s intelligence, but that’s where we are right now as smaller companies are the only ones making family pictures.

When it’s all said and done the awards shows, including the Oscars, are not accurate. Even the nominations for “fan-voted” awards shows right up to Nickelodeon’s “Kids’ Choice” award is what the committee chooses, not us. We’re going to disagree and agree on what should have won. We all have our own tastes. The question still remains whether or not the Oscars reflect the American culture or just the Hollywood culture, one based on ego over humility, one currently based on marketing and merchandising over quality, one that has shown scorn for fans of the properties they adapt, one that has thumbed their nose at animation when movies without live actors were nominated and the celebs had a panic attack, one that has become increasingly insular with yes men, auteurs, artistes, and even more recently activists. If you can enjoy the Oscars for what they are, that’s fine. I still think it’s the shows getting boring more than simply disagreeing with the winners because as the video noted that isn’t a new phenomenon. People are also getting tired of actors and directors showing disgust for any critic of their work. Seeing what won in various categories is interesting but does it tell you what’s a good movie or what one group thinks is good. I still think it’s less proof of US culture and more Hollywood culture. They are not always the same thing.