What's the point of the Oscars? Certainly not the films...

Respected festival awards like the Palme d’Or at Cannes or the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival are selected by a jury, chaired by filmmakers and performers that command regard for their craft. How are the top honours at the Academy Awards decided then? Well, if you’re one of their 10,000-plus members, just log on to their website and run down the list of votes. Haven’t seen every film nominated? That’s okay, nothing is stopping you from choosing your winner.

This check-in with what the industry considers its winners is noble in theory, giving a widespread consensus on what deserves that year’s gongs, but completely falls apart in practice. The Academy is too susceptible to external influence and dazzling, expensive award-season campaigns. Every year the campaigns ramp up and studios throw more and more money behind them in the hopes of catching voter attention. It creates a situation where the winner is often the loudest voice in the room.

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It's a system that enables spiritually bankrupt ware-peddlers like Miramax founder and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein’s films would often live or die depending on Academy recognition, and he knew he could manipulate the voters to his will. In 1999, the Weinstein-produced Shakespeare in Love caused an upset, winning Best Picture over Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Weinstein played dirty, throwing lavish receptions for voters that were against the Academy’s rules, employing numerous consultants to sweet talk members, and starting negative gossip and whispers to tear down his competition.

Instead of being reprimanded, the Weinstein ‘blitzkrieg’ campaign style became the norm. The choice of winners became less about individual member preferences, and more about the shiniest bauble on the tree.

Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture in 1999 due to Harvey Weinstein's 'blitzkrieg' campaign style – which would eventually become the norm (Image: Getty)
It’s a game of power and perception. A game with its own ecosystem attached. Oscar campaigns are now a year-round occurrence. The Golden Globes and other award shows are seen as a dry run for the ‘big night’. Social media plays an invaluable role in the modern conversation, with traditional TV viewing figures struggling to return to former glory. Celebrity culture has always been important to Hollywood, yet it’s never relied so much on red carpets, fashion, gossip, and famous people interacting (everyone remembers Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, but please find me someone who knows what won Best Picture that year). It’s a night for sipping tea and discussing outfits, not a serious recognition of artistic merit or talent.

With that said, how did the Oscars get its prestigious status? To win an Oscar is to be indisputably considered top of the profession, the ultimate gold star. It’s by design. The name of the ‘Academy’ originates in a battle of legitimacy, with Hollywood reeling from pre-Hays Code scandal and looked down upon as a den of sin by conservative forces. The Academy Awards were a rebranding exercise, founded to shed the skin of the roaring 1920s and push Hollywood into the realm of respectability in a conservative 1930s. Nearly a hundred years later that respectability has largely remained in the public conscience, though anyone who follows the inner workings of the Academy knows it is wont to creating its own misery.

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But prestige doesn’t create social media waves, grab the cultural core, and generate business. The Oscars has long had issues with riding the line between a prestigious façade and the desire for relevancy and attention. In 2018, to rejuvenate flailing interest, the Academy proposed a new category: Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film. This proposal was swiftly defeated amid backlash, but it is an interesting look into where the Academy is willing to situate itself now.

This type of change would be unthinkable before. Summer blockbusters and ‘serious’ Oscar season films were separate, distinct entities, and never shall the two meet. But the industry has changed, falling on the huge-budget blockbuster sword, and producing far less Oscar-baiting fare. The Academy is now a well-baked institution and suffers from snail-paced change as a result, so the suggestion stands out as an intriguing break from orthodoxy. Proposed as a way to give merit to commercial cinema, but ultimately being a move to regain fading relevancy, a category for popular film was not the change people were looking for, with the Academy being rather blindsided by #OscarsSoWhite and other social and political causes circling its orbit.

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In the end, there is little to tie the Oscars to genuine achievements in film. The cultural cache of an Oscar win is too alluring, too powerful, and within that the value and art of film are lost. It’s a night for Hollywood to celebrate itself, closing off large swathes of the film world that operate outside its walls. Like the majority of people, I will probably skip the award ceremony tonight, look up who won tomorrow morning, and forget about it as I get on with my day.