Apparently desperate to bring back the audience who every year sighs "I've not seen ANY of the nominees for Best Picture," the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided to add a category "designed around achievement in popular film."
This seems wrong-headedly snobbish to me. They're essentially saying there are "good" films (those that might make over 20 million if they're lucky, but are created by "artists") and popular films (the trash that audiences actually go to see.) I suppose this will allow them to recognize Black Panther this year, a film that moved and spoke to millions, without sullying their hands by awarding "Best Picture" to something that actually made a profit. Like splitting off animated movies, this step creates an artificial divide in the discussion of what is a "good" film.
The original Oscars had no such divide. They recognized some work that was not, perhaps, going to stand the test of time, but movies were not, up to the 1960s, considered an art form so rarified you had to spilt the popular from the artistic. Perhaps a better solution would be to revise the voting so that "Best Picture" nominees reflect those with enough of an audience that, whatever their merits, they have an impact on general society, not just the Academy itself.
Where, I wonder, would you place Best Picture winners like "Casablanca," "Gone with the Wind," "Going My Way" and "The Sound of Music" today? Popular or "art"?
This seems wrong-headedly snobbish to me. They're essentially saying there are "good" films (those that might make over 20 million if they're lucky, but are created by "artists") and popular films (the trash that audiences actually go to see.) I suppose this will allow them to recognize Black Panther this year, a film that moved and spoke to millions, without sullying their hands by awarding "Best Picture" to something that actually made a profit. Like splitting off animated movies, this step creates an artificial divide in the discussion of what is a "good" film.
The original Oscars had no such divide. They recognized some work that was not, perhaps, going to stand the test of time, but movies were not, up to the 1960s, considered an art form so rarified you had to spilt the popular from the artistic. Perhaps a better solution would be to revise the voting so that "Best Picture" nominees reflect those with enough of an audience that, whatever their merits, they have an impact on general society, not just the Academy itself.
Where, I wonder, would you place Best Picture winners like "Casablanca," "Gone with the Wind," "Going My Way" and "The Sound of Music" today? Popular or "art"?
