Once again, the Oscars have come and gone, and the headlines are inundated with articles about “The Biggest Shocks, Snubs, and Surprises” and “Movies the Academy Missed.” I love movies: watching them, talking about them, arguing about them, you name it. So I love the amount of buzz that goes around right now, because finally there are more people actually talking about some of the best movies of the year.
But we take it far too seriously. I say “we,” because I’m guilty of it too. I’ll recommend a movie to a friend, and when they dislike it, I scoff and point them to the awards. “You didn’t like that movie? It won Best Picture!” or “No, that dialogue isn’t stilted, it won Best Original Screenplay.”
Look at this piece in The Atlantic: What Was the Biggest Oscar Night Mistake Ever Made? How much can the Oscars truly matter if Alfred Hitchcock never won a single one? If movies like Saving Private Ryan, Double Indemnity, The Social Network, and Citizen Kane have not won Best Picture? Or the fact that Paul Thomas Anderson has never won an Academy Award?
Appeals to authority are one thing – there’s a reason we value critics, because they (supposedly) know their craft. It becomes a problem when we view beauty and worthiness only through their lens. A movie isn’t suddenly great because it won some arbitrary award; there’s no objective stand to measure them by. If you love a movie, think it is beautiful or profound in some way, then it likely is. It’s not suddenly diminished by the lack of an award next to its name.
There are a lot of people who already argue the Oscars don’t matter: the awards focus on sentimental, self congratulatory films (hence the term “Oscar-bait”), are voted on by a bunch of old white men, and don’t pay attention to genre films. These are all valid arguments, but they’re still irrelevant. You don’t need to point out the problems with the current system, because it’s the idea behind the system that’s the problem.
Instead of relying on an award, I like to rely on conversation and reflection. After watching a movie I like to discuss it with friends and family who saw it too, write about it, and find out what I felt and why I felt it, and what it had to say. Being forced to defend some movies, I find that they really weren’t as good as I thought to begin with, and others I had originally thought were mediocre had a lot more going on that I gave credit for. I stopped relying on the Oscars to tell me what was good or not, and began to rely on the aesthetic judgement of myself and a community I respect.
That’s what differentiates a list of Oscar winners with the Arts and Faith Top 100 Films. The former is the sole judge of what the best movies are that year, while the latter is an ongoing discussion among a community of film enthusiasts, who explain and argue and disagree, and recommend without claiming they are beyond reproach.
So I’ll continue to enjoy over-reacting to movies I don’t think should have won an Oscar, and continue getting in heated arguments with friends. But I’ll be keeping in mind that nothing is at stake here, that nothing is riding on getting a golden statue. It’s fun and leads to some great discussions and discoveries, but I’m just going to stop caring so much about it.
Photo (Flickr cc) by TimShoesUntied.
