As the first important award in the American film and television industry, the second is the Emmy Award for TV, and the third is the Golden Globe Award, which ended not long ago. Since the establishment of 1928, Oscar has not only reflected the development and achievements of American film art, but also influenced the film art in many countries.
It was not until February 20th, 20 13 that the Academy Awards were officially renamed. Although it was generally called "Oscar" after 20 13, although it has always been advertised as "fairness and tolerance", the essence of the Oscar Award has been a "circle award" for nearly half a century. 1927, Louis Mayer, the general manager of MGM, the "King of Hollywood", tried to gather the top Hollywood producers to promote the development of movies and founded the "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences". Although I finally planned to have an abortion for various practical reasons, I finally decided to reward those who made achievements in movies by awarding prizes. This has also made Oscar a "circle award" based on Hollywood film aesthetics.
And a "circle" must have its own set of rules of the game.
Let's start with the doorway behind the Oscar voting system.
Since 1929, the selection of the Academy Awards has gone through two rounds of voting. The first round is nomination voting, which is first nominated by the subordinate departments of the college (by secret ballot). Nominated films will be shown in turn at the headquarters of the college, and then all members of the college will vote in the second round (by secret ballot). Finally, the film will be decided by the number of votes. After the voting, PWC will count the votes. The guards guarded day and night until the day of the award. The whole process seems to be democratic and fair, but the smoke of the Oscar for best film was ignited long before the voting began.
The main conditions for selecting the members of the jury of the Oscar President are their contribution and reputation in the industry and the recommendation of at least two current members. In addition to the professional judges, the branch judges under the presidium also include a huge volunteer team, with five or six thousand volunteers in each branch. In fact, this is the real source of Oscar's influence. Because there is a special "travel talk" in the United States, customers will hire professional lobbying companies and public relations companies to lobby the judges to vote for their films. After receiving the commission from the production company, the lobbying company will first analyze the film to determine which judges will definitely like it and which ones will definitely not, so there is no need to lobby; Which centrists can be won by lobbying. After that, the lobbying company will play the film for the lobbied judge alone, explaining how good the film is during the broadcast, and the lobbying company will charge $2,000 for each film. So in fact, lobbying companies make friends with judges openly and legally. According to the American travel statement, you can't lobby more than two people at a time. The Oscar for Best Picture was voted by the judges of 6000 individual awards. Therefore, the whole lobbying process is quite time-consuming, laborious and expensive.
Not only do you have to spend such a lobbying fee, but also in order to enter the Oscar, you have to publish advertisements and film reviews in magazines and media, so the publicity fee is not a small expense. With such a fund for the operation of the award, the probability of winning the Oscar for this film will indeed increase. However, as an "Oscar Award", Oscar is the most important award in American film industry selected by thousands of senior practitioners. It's just wishful thinking that bad movies want to use money to win back the golden statuette. After all, the establishment of Oscar authority is not achieved overnight. On the one hand, it depends on its strict implementation of rules and respect for film art; On the other hand, it is completely exposed to political light. During the period of 1920s, the vice president of the 4th Academy Award also attended the meeting in person. Although this move may not be appreciated by the college, it has played a great role in strengthening the momentum and establishing the prestige of the college. Therefore, this lobbying system can play a certain role in the case of similar quality of the selected films, but it is of little significance to the films with good reputation and competition for the best films.
After talking about the twists and turns behind the Oscar voting system, let's talk about the selection criteria of the film itself.
Hollywood-the home base of American right-wing culture. American Rightists have a clear concept in culture-believe in God, believe in tradition and cherish family and love.
You see, the story of Titanic saving women and children first is packaged as American ethics and repeated in different movies (such as Independence Day 2).
Especially in special times, Oscar's right deviation is particularly obvious. During World War II, the15th Oscar (1942) awarded six awards to the timely work "Mrs. Miniver", but in the 1970s, with the opening of the Vietnam War, the anti-war sentiment in the United States increased day by day, and the 5th15th Oscar (1978) gave it to.
Because the Oscar "best film" often conforms to the universal culture and right-wing culture of the United States-believing in God, believing in tradition, cherishing family ties and love, the "best foreign language film" is relatively left-leaning. For example, the Swedish film Through the Dark Glass won the 34th Best Foreign Language Film.
Therefore, the Oscar selection tends to be balanced culturally.
In art, Oscar tends to compromise between business and innovation. Gao Zeng said in a program: "The entire film industry in the United States is divided into a large number of low-budget films, such as the Oscar as the main force and the Sundance Film Festival, to ensure that new people will arrive at all levels. However, there are also large films produced under strict systems to ensure and promote the market. At the same time, Sundance has talent in discovering new people and independent films, so he won the Oscar of the whole industrial system. If you understand this, you won't criticize how commercialized Oscar is because there are other awards. "
Because of the popularity of Oscar, people in the industry pay attention to it because awards can bring great reputation and benefits; Actors pay attention because the resources in the industry are tilted after each award; The audience pays attention because they like movies or want to see their favorite actors get academic recognition. So as an audience, what attitude should we take to pay attention to and comment on Oscar? The reason why we are satisfied or dissatisfied with the awards is because everyone has their own film aesthetics in mind. Perhaps there is no blind pursuit, no step-by-step calculation, and it is better to select and recommend diversified films according to one's own film aesthetics and regard Oscar as a grand event.