STEEMPOP // The Welcomed Death of "Oscar Worthy"

It was just a handful of years ago that I would be someone you would call a bit of a "movie buff." I was by no means a fanatic to the level of true fans, the kind of people that basically breathe in movies like air, but it was fair to say that I averaged a "cupple tree" dozen movies watched in the theater a year, as the more toothless residents around me in the Pittsburgh area would say. Mostly I gorged in the winter months, when my day job was a little slow and what else were you going to do in the cold months; and that's when the theaters were willed with the "Oscar Worthy" movies, all vying for some buzz and attention moving into award season. And then I stopped, or at least cut down significantly.

Movies became less a priority as my life became busier but also, mainly, because television programming was starting to become so overwhelmingly good. But, also, what was happening is that I was beginning to feel the sway of "Oscar Worthy" waning on me, reducing me to a point where for the past few years I've been contributing two pints of blood (or whatever the going rate for a movie showing is) just to indulge my blockbuster and nerd tendencies watching big and bombastic superhero movies on the big screen. Now, I actually and typically think that when it comes to celebrating the "best movies of the year" that come Oscar time, there's some pretty good representation of movies that are in a "good" to "great" classification. Though now, admittedly, my ability to gauge just how good they are since my pool of thirty-plus movies a year to judge the nominees against is now reduced to just catching whatever of the nominees I can and saying "yeah, that was such and such." I also posit, though, that the way films are evolving that creative talents aren't making their "Oscar Bait" so bait-tastic anymore, and leaving the Oscars in the dust, or at least showing how outdated those running it is becoming, and that's a good thing.

All last week in the build-up to the 90th Oscars I saw it pop up in my social media, something to the extent of "I like a lot of, but nothing seems Oscar Worthy" and my entire reaction was "well, great." Because there was one thing that I could always determine back in my more "buffish" days and that's when something was made in regard to tickling the sensibilities of old white people who love to pride themselves on being liberal-leaning "auteurs." Sometimes the phrase "Oscar Worthy" was just code for "makes these old codgers feel good about themselves" and you would see plenty of pandering not so much in the winners' circle but definitely in the nomination lists. These people may have a good eye for acting and sweeping camera shots and socially relevant narratives but have always had a blind spot to their egos being stroked, or as rumors swirled this year, their own laziness, So I can't help but propose that, quite frankly, their branding is taking a bit of a hit and directors are directing and producers are producing material outside the Academy's purview and, well, bully for that.

This year's Oscars, to their credit, featured movie nominations involving an off-kilter journey through American style racism through the eyes of an Englishman, a horror movie putting widely on display how even polite white people are terrifying, and, well, fish man loving, not exactly movies you would peg on as being frontrunners to a group of people that once declared Shakespeare in Love the more meaningful film than Saving Private Ryan. Obviously, as that linked story above shows, there's a lot to overcome from the stodgier branch of the Academy but it looks like Hollywood in what it produces is evolving beyond them instead of playing to their whims. And that's great, and hopefully, we as an audience also move beyond this silly notion that something that directly tickles the fancy of the octogenarian branch of Hollywood is the pinnacle of filmmaking in a given year. I'm all for the awards themselves, I think over the years that while the winners have been hit or miss that nomination wise they have done a lot of good in highlighting quality film work, but it's about time that we as an audience and the supposed "gatekeepers" to these awards got over the fluff that term "Oscar Worthy" has come to traditionally mean in its appeasement to a particular demographic and transition to just plain meaning a quality piece of cinema worthy of being celebrated as such.

-Humphrey Lee

The above article is original and exclusive to @steempop. The Author has been compensated for his writings and has an account ready for him in Steemit if and when he decides to join.

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