The Oscars aren’t the movie Olympics — they’re sports day

Keiran King, Online Columnist

A
century ago, America’s film industry was like our telecoms industry, a
gold rush enabled by exciting technology and unbridled greed. The
workers at the bottom — carpenters, electricians, painters — had already
unionised. The prospect of the more expensive talent — writers,
directors, actors — demanding huge pensions, health benefits and
residuals threatened to stem the obscene flow of profits.

What MGM head Louis B. Mayer and the other movie moguls needed was a way to prevent another union,
some kind of pre-emptive organisation that would solve labour disputes
internally. Plus, this body could pump out good public relations to
counterbalance the scandalous headlines for which the famous were
infamous. But how to get the creative egomaniacs to join? What bait
would prove irresistible?

Thus,
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was born (named to fake
a permanence it has since realised), along with its annual awards
ceremony, first held as a private dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt
Hotel in 1929. The presentations lasted all of 15 minutes.

What
began so long ago as a bunch of old, rich white men from California has
morphed over the decades into ... a bunch of old, rich white men from
California. The Los Angeles Times sniffed out almost
all of the 6,000 Academy members in 2012, discovering that fully half
are over 60, three-quarters are men, and a shocking 94 per cent are
white.  If you assembled them all in a room today, it would look like
the most racist, sexist, parochial organisation in America.

These
are the people who vote on the movies each year. Sorry to ruin the
magic, but when a movie gets nominated, it has more to do with idiosyncrasies than
excellence. The nominations are occupationally segregated — writers nod
writers, editors nod editors, and so on. If you're an unloved genius
(and since geniuses make everyone else look stupid, most are), you can
languish without recognition. Daring but obscure films get overlooked,
because nobody nominates a film they haven't seen. And biases persist
because membership is by invite only, so existing members naturally
invite like-minded friends. Good luck, young black women.

If
the Academy Awards really are a backward, haphazard affair, how did it
become such a big deal, behind only the Super Bowl in American
television viewership? Simple. Because the TV networks and the movie
studios are the same companies, with a shared profit motive. Fox and
20th Century Fox share a parent. CBS is part of National Amusements Inc, which also controls Paramount. NBC and Universal are sister companies. And ABC, current Oscars telecaster, is housed under The Walt Disney Company.
They pull out the stops at the awards so you pull out your wallet at
the cineplex. As for the global audience, cable TV has proved a far more
insidious occupying force than any general’s wet dream, pulsing
America’s soft power into every living room.

The
Oscars, far from the movie Olympics they’re inflated to be, are more
like your local sports day, with the same ageing guardians, traditional
beliefs, and meaningless trophies. It’s a big ad for Hollywood,
interrupted by smaller ads. That’s fine for Americans, but you should
know better. There’s a whole world of cinema out there, every bit as
emotive, explosive and exhilarating as the latest Yankee fare.

India
makes more movies and sells more tickets than the US (easy with 1.2
billion people), and its stars, like Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor, are
just as arresting — check out ‘Talaash’. Nigerian films dominate the Saharan subcontinent.
Japan, Hong Kong, China, Britain, France, Italy and Scandinavia all
regularly produce high-quality films, which Hollywood pilfers and
remakes, literally banking on your ignorance.  Best Picture winner ‘The
Departed’? That was the kick-ass Hong Kong action flick ‘Infernal Affairs’. Trade in this year’s nominated ‘Captain Phillips’ for the superior Danish suspense, ‘A Hijacking’. And don’t even bother with the pending American version — see the Norwegian thriller ‘Headhunters’ now.

Film critic Andrew O’Hehir says it best:
“Most people ... consume a limited range of entertainment products,
sold to them by a few large corporations, for the same reason they eat
food that makes them sick. It’s all they know about. Beneath an umbrella
of unlimited freedom, they are offered a constricted array of
predigested selections, and persuaded that they do not like things they
have not tried.”

This Sunday, don’t fall for the ‘American Hustle’. Skip the Oscars, hop on to Netflix, and let ‘The Hunt’ begin.

Keiran King is a playwright and producer. His column appears every Wednesday. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and yell@keiranking.com.