The Academy Awards are considered recognitions of classic pictures, the best-of-the-best and pinnacles of filmmaking. The title "Oscar winner" carries great weight and prestige in the public mindset, and studios spend millions each year on Oscar campaigns. The best films, however, do not always win the awards; political and individual biases often sway voters into picking films based on criteria other than the quality of the movies themselves.
"Citizen Kane" is one of the most oft-cited greatest films of all time, and yet it lost the Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture statuettes on Oscar night in 1941. "Citizen Kane" lost to "How Green Was My Valley," a now-forgotten film about a family struggling in a poor mining town. It is in no way comparable to Orson Welles' masterpiece.
Lauded for its stellar acting, cinematography and directing, "Citizen Kane" would have been a shoo-in for Best Picture if not for media mogul William Randolph Hearst, on whom "Kane" is unflatteringly partly based. Numerous sources, including a thoroughly researched 1996 PBS documentary, have uncovered how Hearst used his influence to prevent the film from being seen in anyway he could, and his influence most likely robbed the picture of many deserved Oscars.
Whitewashing the Oscar pool
Just as political and personal vendettas have influenced Academy Award voters to shy away from rewarding certain pictures, racial biases have also stopped the Academy from acknowledging deserving films and performances. The Academy has awarded only 13 acting Oscars to African-Americans in 83 years. Not a single one of the 20 acting nominations from this year went to a performance by an African-American.
It is unclear if this trend is a manifestation of racism among Academy voters or if this trend simply reflects Hollywood's lack of diverse and interesting roles for African-American actors. The fact remains that actors of color are not nearly as rewarded as their white counterparts. A New York Times article on Feb. 12 entitled "Hollywood's Whiteout" indicated that this year's nominees were less diverse than the nominees for Best Picture in 1940, which shows that Hollywood may not have progressed as much as people think it has in the past 70 years.
This kind of racism seems to not only affect an actor's chances at an Oscar but also a picture's chances. "Dreamgirls," a dramatization of Diana Ross' career, was the most-nominated film in 2004, yet received neither a Best Picture nor Best Director nomination — the first time in Oscar history that the most-nominated movie of the year did not secure a Best Picture nomination.
"The Color Purple" (1985), now considered a classic film for its strong acting, sets and directing, is tied with "The Turning Point" (1977) as the most nominated film to not win a single Academy Award: It went zero for 11 on Oscar night. Despite huge box office success (over $140 million worldwide) and its high pedigree (the film is based on a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel and made by some of film's most honored craftsmen, including Steven Spielberg), the film won nothing.
It also appears that when African-Americans take the helm and direct a film, the Academy overlooks their work as well. No African-American has ever won the Best Director prize, and only two directors in the Oscar's 83-year history have even been nominated: John Singleton for "Boyz n the Hood" (1991) and Lee Daniels for "Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push' by Sapphire" (2009). No African-American woman has even been nominated for the honor.
In the closet
Much like race, sexuality seems to have an effect on how the Academy assesses a film. While this appears to be gradually changing, Hollywood and the Academy have not yet fully accepted LGBT-themed films.
There is a very limited number of openly gay leading actors and actresses, which may be a reflection of actors worrying about a lack of parts if they reveal their sexuality. As Sir Ian McKellen recently put it in his Nov. 5 interview for Popeater, "There are no openly gay stars in Hollywood, so someone is telling [closeted actors] to shut up."
The Academy is very willing to reward straight actors who play gay roles on screen, including Tom Hanks for "Philadelphia" (1993), Charlize Theron for "Monster" (2003) and Sean Penn for "Milk" (2008), but LGBT actors who play straight characters do not get the same type of praise. Straight actors playing gay roles are often considered daring and versatile for performing as someone with a different sexual orientation, yet it does not seem that LGBT actors get that same recognition.
LGBT-centered films also experience a bias by the Academy. Though the output of these films has increased in recent years, Academy voters have rarely embraced queer films. According to a Nov. 10 article in the Hollywood Reporter entitled "Why Age Matters," the average age of the Academy members is 57 years old. This could explain why voters seem hesitant to acknowledge LGBT-themed films, as many grew up in a time when LGBT issues were less accepted or even ignored.
One of the most glaring examples of LGBT-centered films being brushed off by the Academy is when "Brokeback Mountain" lost the Best Picture award to "Crash" in 2005. The decision was made despite "Brokeback" winning the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award (England's equivalent to the Oscars), the Director's Guild Award, the Writer's Guild Award, the Golden Globe Award, the Producer's Guild Award and an unprecedented number of critics' awards. Even with its huge box office take (grossing over $170 million worldwide) and its critical lauding, many believe that "Brokeback" simply lost because many of the older Academy members may have felt uncomfortable voting for or even watching a film about a gay romance, even though many agree it is one of the most effective and best romance films ever produced.
Genre matters
Social issues are not the only root of Academy bias. Best Picture awards are also rarely bestowed upon films of certain genres. Comedies, for one, rarely win in a major way at the Oscars. The last two comedies to win were "Shakespeare in Love"(1998) and "Annie Hall" (1977), and both are more like romances than comedies. Classic and fan-favorite comedies like "Animal House" (1978), "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1979), "Borat" (2006) and "The Hangover" (2009) fail to even get nominated for Best Picture, despite how funny audiences find these films and others similar to them.
Only three animated films in the Academy's history have ever been nominated for Best Picture — "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Up" (2009) and "Toy Story 3" (2010) — and none have ever won, even though Disney (and more recently Disney-owned Pixar) has for decades been making classic children's films that are rich in storytelling and filmmaking. It seems that the Oscar voters ignored many of these classic films, along with "The Lion King"(1994), "Aladdin" (1992), "Toy Story"(1995) and "Finding Nemo" (2003), because they were seen merely as children's films, despite their acclaim and extremely high quality.
Even Alfred Hitchcock, who is now considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was snubbed at the Oscars: He never won a Best Director award. His films were mostly mystery, horror and suspense movies, which the Academy often looks down on as B-grade pictures. Martin Scorsese's classic crime films from the '70s and '80s suffered a similar fate, and Stanley Kubrick, another master filmmaker, never received a Best Director honor despite his numerous, meticulously constructed pictures.
Even this year it seems that the Academy, who again is made up of older individuals, ignored the critically lauded "The Social Network" (2010) in most of the major categories in favor of the more standard Oscar film, "The King's Speech"(2010). "King's Speech" had the perfect Oscar pedigree, while "The Social Network" was perceived as more of a younger person's film due to its focus on the creation of Facebook. Time will tell which picture ultimately gets remembered as the better film, but "The Social Network" is a very daring and ambitious movie that will hopefully be rewarded for its vision someday.
