*This blog was originally written on April 13, 2017 but was delayed due to issues.
Enjoy,
Mr. Bee
Last Friday the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced some rule changes for the 90th Oscars which will happen early next year. Most of the rules make sense. However, the rule that got many annoyed was the rule with the animation category. The nominations are decided by the people who work in the animation industry. With the exception of best picture, it works like that in all the other categories. This system is not perfect because people may vote for their friends - as one academy member may have admitted when she said. “I gave it to [How to Train Your Dragon 2] because I liked the movie and I like the people who worked on the movie.” However, for reasons unknown, the academy has decided to scrap this system specifically for the Animated Feature category.
To help you understand problem with this decision, I will give you a brief history of the academy as it relates to animation. The Best Animated (short subject) was developed five years after the creation of the Oscars. Incidentally, the first winner was Flowers and Trees, which was the first first ever color cartoon. Then, a few years later, Walt Disney released the first American animated movie to be released - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However, for Snow White, the academy decided to award Disney a “special” award - much like a participation trophy (They later awarded the same thing to Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Toy Story). Around thirty years later, Disney released The Jungle Book (I’m mentioning Disney a lot!), and it was the academy president Gregory Peck’s favorite movie that year. He campaigned very hard to get it nominated for Best Picture. The Academy thought that animated movies had no place being nominated in that category. Then in 1991, Disney released Beauty and the Beast (over 60 years after the initial Oscars Ceremony), and Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture. It ultimately lost to Silence of the Lambs. And then, in 2002, they finally added an animation category. Incidentally, the first winner in the category was Shrek. In 2010, Pixar’s Up was nominated for Best Picture only to lose to The Hurt Locker. The next year, Toy Story 3 was nominated for Best Picture but lost to the King’s Speech. Now, you are caught up to speed.
Here is another longstanding Oscar “rule” that I disagree with. The academy does not consider voice acting as acting thus making them ineligible for an Oscar. This rule discredits all voice actors and diminishes their art. In many respects, this rule may be why many people consider voice acting the butt of many jokes. Acting genius, Mel Blanc, never got an honorary or competitive Oscar in his life-time, and that is tragic since Looney Tunes has had a dramatic influence on cartoons to this day.
The crux of the problem for me with this change is that the animation branch at the academy has nominated some pretty good films. And some of them are foreign or independent. And for many of these films, they NEED that nomination to get credibility and eyeballs in America. The academy is blatant with their prejudice towards animation. Every year The Hollywood Reporter interviews many academy voters to see who they voted for. Here are some of their quotes:
“I liked them all about the same, so I decided not to vote.”
“I have seen none of them. I have no interest whatsoever. That ended when I was 6. My son dragged me to a few when he was 6; I would seat him and go outside and make phone calls.”
“I never got a chance to watch those screeners. There were so many films to watch and I just had to pick and choose.”
There are some academy members that do think that animation is a legitimate medium, and they have told the interviewer as much. You can find them on your own if you’d like.
Overall, I feel that this rule change will probably get rid of the independent and foreign movies from being nominated and deny the chance for many great movies to be recognized. And, given the many beliefs on animation, you could end up seeing Ice Age movies and Hotel Transylvania 2 being nominated - and that’s not acceptable. Granted, these movies are commercial successes, but they are NOT award-worthy and are largely written just to make a buck. There are enough great projects out there that deserve recognition for their craft that shouldn’t get ignored. This new rule jeopardizes them. Goodnight, and Bee Happy!™
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