I don’t want to ponder stale arguments about the aesthetic merits of television, search for the lost joys of going to the cinema, or lament lost golden ages, just present the facts. Feature films now and then compete for attention with myriad other forms of visual narration, many of which are delivered through the same devices – and from the same companies – that bring the films to us. But these business units are no longer what they used to be. Some of the old studio nameplates (Disney, Warner Bros.) have been grouped into cross-platform agglomerations (Disney +, HBO Max) that treat movies as one type of content among many.
These outfits, and the other surviving studios, have to compete with companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple who bring the monopoly DNA of the tech world to the old school Hollywood oligopoly. And Hollywood is quickly losing its geographic and imaginative standing as the global center of cultural gravity splits and shifts. Whatever the art of cinema, it and its audience are radically decentralized. The love of movies may be stronger and more widespread than ever, but it can’t be captured on a night when a handful of movies and a room full of stars faint.
Why pretend something else? Why pretend the center can somehow hold up, as if the right mix of old and not entirely new faces and stories can do justice to a Protean art form and a divided audience? It’s time to tear open the blueprints and start over.
What does that mean in practice? On the one hand, this means further expanding membership in the academy in the interest of geographical, generational and cultural diversity. The more voters, the better. On the other hand, I think that it means treating the “parasite” victory not as an outlier, but as a harbinger. This film, a curvy, impeccably staged, brilliantly acting thriller with pungent, humanistic social criticism, fulfilled the Oscar ideal better than any other mainstream Hollywood production, since I don’t know, “Silence of the Lambs”? “The apartment”? “Casablanca”? And there’s more where it comes from, by which I don’t just mean South Korea or Bong’s dazzling imagination. The academy should abolish the best international feature ghetto with its arcane entry regulations and its dubious trust in the tastes of government officials and make the best image an explicitly international category.
Or – and additionally – find new ways of designating excellence. Get smaller and bigger at the same time by giving space and attention to the unusual, the experimental and the handmade, as well as the gaudy and the big. Undo the stultifying hierarchy of genres that routinely excludes comedy, horror, action, and art. This could involve a simple change in attitude or taste, but possibly a formal change in the rules. What if there were categories at the genre or budget level (best comic film; best million dollar film) and those films were also eligible for best picture? What if the Oscars took inspiration from bracketology and list-obsessed media to open up voter thinking? Millions of movie fans cast fake ballots every year. What if there was a way to make these ballots come true?
I don’t know if any of these ideas would work or if they are good ideas. Either way, it’s about keeping movies off of a vague, sentimental standard as they once were and trying to understand them for what they actually are. The Oscars take themselves too seriously and therefore don’t take movies seriously enough, don’t fully recognize their power, diversity and ability to change. We should worry less about continuity and tradition, about preserving ancient folkways and narrow canons, than about illuminating and exploring a story that is still unknown to many movie buffs and that is still very much to be won over, even if it is part of it a common story is heritage.
