Beyond The Lens: Oscars 2019 Edition
The 91st Academy Awards will be held on February 24, 2019
Modern-Day Tokenism:
Black Panther, the run-of-the-mill Marvel movie, got seven Oscar nominations this year, including Best Picture. Many people, such as myself, believe that the critically acclaimed film would have had an entirely different reception had the cast not been made up of a black majority. People like to pretend that Black Panther is a masterpiece and jump on the Wakanda-bandwagon, but the movie itself is objectively average, and nothing more than that. Along with Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman got nominated for six Academy Awards, a film which in the same vein as Bohemian Rhapsody (3 nominations) is often criticized for historical inaccuracies and politically correct preaching. While both are by no means bad films, they are not Oscar-worthy. The Academy Awards are supposed to represent the best of the best, showcasing the peak that cinema has to offer.
The moment movies are recognized for their impact on culture and political achievements rather than technical and objective success is the moment that the Oscars stop being awards for cinema and become a show for which movie can extrapolate the highest amount of political correctness.
It appears as though the Academy made great efforts to nominate as many minorities as they can. After 2015’s #OscarsSoWhite campaign, the focus has turned to the casts/crew’s ethnicity and the movies subject matter rather than the actual craft. The general reception is clear, 2014 saw 43.7 million viewers tune in; that number became 26.5 million last year and is expected to sink even lower. The Oscars are not what they used to be and have lost a big amount of their value and significance.
No Host!
The 91st Academy Awards mark the first Oscars to be “hostless.” Kevin Hart was initially signed on to host the event, but after the uncovering of alleged homophobic tweets from 2009, he was invited to leave. Since then rumors have stirred up about The Avengers handing out the awards. With more celebrities being judged and punished for things they said a decade ago, (James Gunn & Mel Gibson among others) the Academy continues to ignore the character arcs they praise so highly in movies.
Mexican Infiltration
Four native Mexicans have won the Best Director award in the past five years, (the exception being 2017, when Damien Chazelle won for La La Land). 2019 marks Alfonso Cuaron’s second Oscar nomination (he won in 2014 for Gravity). With Alejandro González Iñárritu being awarded in both 2015 and 2016, and Guillermo del Toro’s triumph last year, it’s been a great couple of years for The Three Amigos.