Are the Oscars really merit-based?
By Jachin Lam | December 8As we await next year’s Oscars and nominees, I’ve been thinking about past winners — especially the 2023 awards season in which two actors, Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser, made major Hollywood comebacks with Oscars in hand, and Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress. The entire “Everything Everywhere All At Once” cast and crew swept that year’s award season, with much of their campaign gaining internet buzz due to the movie’s significance resonating with the Asian American community. One outlier in their success, however, was Jamie Lee Curtis’ first Oscar win, which many referred to as a ‘legacy Oscar.’ This prompted me to think more about how awards campaigns work — and whether some winners truly ‘deserve’ these so-called ‘legacy Oscars,’ or whether they should stop being handed out altogether.
