Tanner Conley
Staff Writer
Any sort of award show is sure to have some sort of controversy involved. Whether it was an award snub, wardrobe malfunction or mistakenly awarding best picture to La La Land instead of Moonlight, no award show is safe from the public scrutiny and subsequent chaos that results whenever a major body makes a decision live on TV.
The 2020 Oscars were no exception. With millions of people tuning in, the stage was set for a night of glitz and glamour. The recent Golden Globes fiasco in which host Ricky Gervais absolutely bar-be-qued Hollywood culminating in an outburst saying:
“So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a political platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God and f*** off. OK?”
As a result of Gervais’ comments, the Oscars decided to go host-less and featured an ensemble cast to present each award with various musical performances mixed in. The biggest story of the night was the unprecedented success of Parasite, a South Korean satirical thriller directed by Bong Joon-ho. Parasite is the first foreign film to win the Best Picture award. It also won the awards for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film bringing its total to four awards out of six nominations.
“It is really rare that one film has that much success in general,” said amateur filmmaker and UW junior, Kasen Urhammer. “As for individual awards, it’s really important that it won Best Picture because it shows that people outside the major centers of filmmaking have a chance to produce some of the best films of a given year…The majority of the Academy, as far as I know, [are] native English speakers and don’t know other languages to even get into foreign films. So, the fact that they recognize other films is very important.”
The aforementioned “Academy” is a secretive group that could have as many as 9,000 individuals who are professionals within the motion picture industry. They are responsible for the nominations and selections that take place at each year’s Academy Awards, now commonly known as the Oscars.
In recent times, the Academy has come under fire for a distinct lack of diversity among the nominations and even more so among the winners.
“There’s always been claims about lack of diversity, but part of the problem is that the Academy is made up of a bunch of old, white men,” Urhammer said. “Most of them are old-school white filmmakers from times when it was very rare to have people who were a different gender or color. I think in the future, we’re going to have a lot more diversity in the Academy which will allow for more of the diversity we are starting to see in the film market.”
However, there is a fine line between being diverse and pandering according to Urhammer.
“I also appreciate that [this year’s awards] doesn’t feel like pandering like some of the previous Oscar’s awards have been. For example, last year there was a whole lot of dispute around if Green Book should have won. A lot of people were like “It should have been Roma”. Roma did get recognized for best director, but people still remember Roma (more than Green Book) to the point where less than a year later it was put into the Criterion collection. So, the fact that they recognized that instead of the best picture shows that Roma was more deserving, and they were just pandering to a film.”
No award show will ever be the result of a unanimous decision. At the end of the day, someone will always end up upset they or their side did not win. It is just part of being a human. But that certainly will not stop anyone from trying to win it all.
