Is the Academy out of touch?

The omission of The Dark Knight - the second-highest grossing film of all time, behind multiple Oscar winner Titanic - from the Academy Awards Best Picture nominations has had some question whether the Academy is out of touch with mainstream moviegoers, preferring small,under-seen character dramas to films that connect with audiences on a large scale. Which, of course, can lead to a debate of art vs. commerce with regard to filmmaking: yes, movies are intended to be entertainment first and foremost, but tying them directly to box office haul would turn them into the motion picture equivalent of the Billboard Music Awards (i.e. irrelevant).

But it's of serious concern to ABC, the television network with the broadcast rights to the Oscar ceremony. While the Academy Awards was once 'must see TV', ratings have steadily plummetedin recent years, leading to efforts to streamline the show and add more variety-type elements. And, the argument goes, things aren't being helped by little independent movies being honoured in place of populist - and critically acclaimed - fare like The Dark Knight.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons why Oscar ratings aren't what they once were. First off, there's a ridiculous number of awards shows on TV nowadays, both on major networks and specialty channels. The Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Spirit Awards, the People's Choice Awards, etc. etc. Some of these have been around for years but are just now being available to the public, which in some cases has taken away some of the fun: the Globes, for instance, have always been a more casual awards night, incorporating dinner and lots of alcohol, so when they were first broadcast we got to see lengthy, heartfelt speeches from well-lubricated celebrities. This year, speeches had a time limit and the whole event seemed like a dress rehearsal for the Oscars. Regardless, there's bound to be a fatigue factor setting in, even in this celebrity-obsessed society.

Let's put that aside, though, and look at the films the Academy has chosen to honour over the past several years. Many would point to 1996 as a major shift in the types of movies that courted Oscar's favour. The Best Picture nominees that year were:

Fargo

Secrets and Lies

Jerry Maguire

The English Patient (winner)

Shine

Only one of these were produced by a major studio or featured a well-known actor (Jerry Maguire). The rest were small independent projects, three of which were produced by now-defunct upstart studio Miramax, starring basically unknown actors, dealing with pretty dark subject matter. All were very good films, by the way, but none really captured the imagination of the North American public.

Here's the list of BP nominees the year before:

Braveheart (winner)

Apollo 13

Babe

Il Postino

Sense and Sensibility

You could say that's an odd line-up too, but it's certainly more mainstream than its successor. Braveheart, Babe, and Apollo 13 were all major-studio releases, and Sense and Sensibility featured well-known British actors and was pretty popular in its own right. Only the foreign-language Il Postino was likely to make people say, "what?"

What about the '97 Oscars - were they as anti-mainstream as the year before?

As Good As It Gets

The Full Monty

Titanic (winner)

L.A. Confidential

Good Will Hunting

Here we've got a mix of independents (Good Will Hunting, The Full Monty) and big-budget studio pictures (As Good As It Gets, Titanic, L.A. Confidential), with the biggest of them all taking home the little golden man. Hardly out of touch with popular opinion, I would say (although possibly out of touch with reality, calling The Full Monty one of the year's best).

Let's look at a complete list of BP nominees from the past ten years:

1998

Shakespeare in Love (winner)

Saving Private Ryan

Elizabeth

The Thin Red Line

Life is Beautiful

1999

American Beauty (winner)

The Cider House Rules

The Green Mile

The Insider

The Sixth Sense

2000

Gladiator (winner)

Chocolat

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Erin Brockovich

Traffic

2001

A Beautiful Mind (winner)

Gosford Park

In the Bedroom

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Moulin Rouge

2002

Chicago (winner)

Gangs of New York

The Hours

The Pianist

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

2003

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (winner)

Lost in Translation

Seabiscuit

Mystic River

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

2004

Million Dollar Baby (winner)

The Aviator

Finding Neverland

Ray

Sideways

2005

Crash (winner)

Brokeback Mountain

Capote

Good Night, and Good Luck

Munich

2006

The Departed (winner)

Babel

Letters from Iwo Jima

Little Miss Sunshine

The Queen

2007

No Country for Old Men (winner)

Atonement

Juno

Michael Clayton

There Will Be Blood

2008

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frost/Nixon

Milk

Slumdog Millionaire

The Reader

Well then. There are certainly a number of these nominees whose worthiness as Best Picture of the Year is debatable (cough - Shakespeare in Love - cough) but it looks to me like the Academy is pretty reliable in what makes up the Top 5: a couple of 'prestige' pictures from well-known directors, an independent or two that's made some noise on the film festival circuit (often courtesy of the brothers Weinstein), and a wild card that no one thinks has a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

So, is the Academy become out of touch? I would say, no more than it's always been. Yes it's odd that The Dark Knight won't be competition for the top honour, and were I voting I probably would've included it in my nomination package. But 'best' is subjective, and the collective preferences of the Academy is at once pretty established and yet not something one should take to the bank. If you look at awards shows in general as a way for good movies to get larger viewership, than perhaps omitting The Dark Knight isn't such a bad thing. If you look at them as celebrating the honest-to-goodness best films released in a given year, you're probably set up for disappointment.