Let’s put the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ whitewashing and racism controversy aside for a second. This is an issue that I am personally very tired of, and one that has been covered by many experts across different platforms.
During the last few years of high school, around a week or so before the Oscars each year, I would binge-watch most of the films nominated for the Best Picture award. I used the nomination as guidance for what were supposedly great films, selected by certified film expert geniuses. Then I found out about “For Your Consideration” campaigns.
Most of the movies on my all-time best movies list so far have been Oscar nominees or winners, regardless of whether I knew that they were nominated, or won an Oscar in the first place.
There is a significant financial incentive to campaign: enough for campaign managers to spend up to $10 million dollars just to get the picture to win an Oscar. This is because a nominated film can experience an increase in revenue exponentially over its lifetime, which renowned actor Edward Norton referred to as a “game of monetization” in an interview with IndieWire.
It seems that, just like everything else, the Oscars and the Golden Globe Awards, among others, can be bought. I had always been under the impression that despite the trailers, the billboards and the commercials, at least the judges, the very people we rely on purely because of their impartial professionalism, were unbiased.
In Thailand, where I come from, for example, whether or not a foreign picture even gets distributed to Thai theaters appears to largely depend on the picture’s ability to sell. As a result, the more obscure films would most likely need an Oscar or Golden Globe nomination to do so. Without the prestige of these award nominations, however, it is unlikely that I would have ever seen such great movies in the first place.
It is highly unlikely that this would have any significant effect on the awards’ prestige. I, for one, would continue to follow the event each year, cherry-picking from the nominees for Best Picture and Best Original Music Score. I refuse to let this issue ruin the awards for me, but instead I choose to be more aware of what I watch and why I’m watching it.
In fact, although a majority of the movies on my top movies list are in one way or another related to the Oscars, the small minority that have ended up on the list are actually there by chance. When “The Lobster” arrived in Thailand last year, I still remember how a friend of mine told me to just watch it. No reviews, no trailers, nothing. It was one of the best films I had seen that year and the fact that I knew absolutely nothing about it beforehand just made it even greater.
Finding out about “For Your Consideration” campaigns helped me break free from a toxic viewing pattern that worshipped the all-knowing critics and the awards that certified greatness. There is no reason why awards and critics should dictate what we watch. Yet it would be ignorant to think that what we choose to watch or don’t watch is not, in one way or another, influenced by a financial incentive.
