Since its first public broadcast in 1930, the Academy Awards have been a benchmark of quality and status in the American Motion Picture Industry. Dismissed as an inferior mass art by cultural critics of the time, the Oscars went a long way in cementing cinema as a significant art-form, requiring great technical and creative contributions from all involved. Blurring the line between "art films" and "popular entertainment," the implicit theme of this awards show was that motion pictures, more than any other medium, could have its cake and eat it too. Films could be works of high culture and spectacular entertainment at the same time. So long as the craft was state of the art and the story had the audience swooning, the Academy Awards would have a little golden man for the respective filmmakers.

As time has gone on and the film industry has evolved, the Academy Awards have changed in striking (and contradictory) ways. On the one hand, the awards show has become even more elite, growing more and more distant from mainstream audiences (this trend has spawned the cultural term "Oscar Bait," describing a dour film of dubious merit designed to rake in nominations come awards season). On the other hand, the Academy has shied away from truly groundbreaking, innovative, or transgressive films, though this goes back to the award show's origin. Winning an Oscar may have meant more than it does today, but who gets nominated has always been an intensely political and institutional question.

As we approach the 94th Academy Awards, cinema lovers wait to see if critical darlings like Jane Campion, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, and Joachim Trier will receive overdue recognition from America's most elite awards show. But with Palme d'Or winner Titane missing from the nominations, lackluster star vehicle Don't Look Up nominated for Best Picture, and key awards removed from the telecast, it's time to wonder: has cinema outgrown the Academy Awards?

Academy Awards: The Ceremony

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ABC

The 94th Academy Awards will be hosted on March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre. The program will be broken into three acts, each hosted by a different popular figure: Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer, and Regina Hall. This is a notable shift from previous ceremonies, which either featured a host or co-hosts throughout the entire show, or (in recent years) no host at all. The reason for the change is simple: the hope is to keep audiences from getting bored and changing the channel.

This year's Oscars feature a few notable changes to the formula, and just about all of them are motivated by that key concern: keeping audience viewership steady and high. The most controversial change is the exemption of eight awards from the live broadcast. The awards for Animated Short Film, Documentary Short Subject, Film Editing, Live Action Short Film, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Score, Production Design, and Sound will be pre-taped before the broadcast.

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The ceremony will also feature an additional award, the Oscars Fan Favorite. The winner of this award will be drawn from a Twitter contest that was held from February 14th to March 3rd. Movie fans were encouraged to vote for their favorite film and movie moment of the year with the hashtags #OscarsFanFavorite and #OscarsCheerMoment. This campaign has also been controversial, frequently compared to the negatively received proposition for an Academy Award for Best Popular Film. These efforts by the Academy have drawn criticism for making an elitist distinction between movies of merit and movies enjoyed by the public and for rewarding high-budget films that lack artistic merit. In other words, the idea was criticized for being elitist and not elitist enough.

We are seeing an identity crisis, not only for the Academy but for the industry itself. In a world where (cue deep gravelly trailer voice) the only films that seem to draw audiences to the theaters are franchise films with enormous budgets. The Academy Awards are struggling to decide if they represent the broader public or movie critics and the lovers of cinema as an art-form. The problem is, they haven't picked a side, and the controversial ceremony is emblematic of this ambivalence.

Academy Awards: The Hopeful

Netflix

There are a number of reasons for film lovers to be excited about the awards show. For starters, many quality films by reliable directors are nominated and have a serious chance of recognition. The films in question (e.g. Licorice Pizza by Paul Thomas Anderson, Nightmare Alley by Guillermo Del Toro) are the sort you would expect to be nominated. They aren't exactly dangerous or groundbreaking, but that doesn't take away from their overall quality. If nothing else, the Academy Awards can be relied on to create a selection of well crafted prestige pictures: safe but good.

On a more exciting note, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car has racked up a few nominations. In previous years it would be easy to dismiss it. An international film has a chance of getting nominated if it's truly great, but no matter how great, you can count on it losing out to an American picture. That may have changed, however, when Bong Joon Ho's class-conscious thriller Parasite (2019) took home most of the major awards, including Best Picture, in one of the most thrilling victories in recent Oscars history. Regardless of its success, it's nice to see a three-hour Japanese drama (virtually unknown to Americans without a Criterion Channel subscription) receive some major nods.

Jane Campion makes history this year as the first woman to be nominated for Best Director twice. This is troubling in its own right, but it is, perhaps, a step in the right direction. Her film, the Power of the Dog, is a layered examination of masculinity and desire through the Western tropes and has received universal acclaim.

On the note of long-delayed recognition for female auteurs, this year's Honorary Academy Awards will include cult icon Elaine May. One of the most significant figures in mid-twentieth century improvisational comedy, Elaine May also directed four feature films, all of which have received critical acclaim from contemporary critics. Although her final feature, Ishtar, was long considered one of the worst movies ever made, this has come to be understood as unfair hype surrounding an effective if flawed film, hardly the trash-fire that locked out one of New Hollywood's most distinctive directorial voices. The award coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of her sophomore feature, the Heartbreak Kid, a delirious, hilarious masterpiece of entitlement, desire, and self-destruction.

The other two Honorary Academy Awards will go to Liv Ullman, the earth-shattering star of Persona and longtime muse of director Ingmar Bergman, and Samuel L. Jackson, perhaps America's most iconic character actor. Jackson's honorary award may finally make up for his hilarious let-down during the 67th Academy Awards.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen's animated feature Flee has received nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Animated Feature Film, an exciting development for lovers of mature animation outside the kid-oriented Disney-fied norm. Joachim Trier's acclaimed drama the Worst Person in the World has received much deserved nods in the Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay (along with co-writer Eskil Vogt) categories.

Academy Awards: The Troubling

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Netflix

Despite the handful of hopeful draws, there are many elements in the upcoming Academy Awards to give film lovers pause. For one thing, arguably the best film of the year did not garner a single nomination, as Julia Ducournau's Palme d'Or winner Titane was snubbed entirely despite rave reviews. It's not difficult to see why: hyper-violent, thematically ambiguous, and genderqueer to the core, Titane is a provocative charge into seldom-tread cinematic territory. A serious meditation on love in a world decaying into the inanimate, wrapped up in body horror and complicated eroticism (focussing on female sexuality no less), Titane is exactly the kind of great movie the Oscars have never recognized. Though the Academy is undoubtedly making an attempt to be more inclusive, it makes sense why they would nominate Jane Campion and the Power of the Dog over Julia Ducournau and Titane. Despite its female director and the film's examination of masculinity and homoeroticism, the Power of the Dog is still a movie about men, operating in a familiar filmic setting. The fact that nominating a woman director seems to be an "either-or" situation merely speaks to deeper issues in the Academy's "gender inclusivity."

The Worst Person in the World, also one of the best-reviewed films of the year, was nominated in some categories, but not for Best Picture or Best Director. On the flip side, Don't Look Up, which received a mixed reception for its uneven narrative and shallow satire, has been nominated for four major awards. This is seemingly for no reason except that it was directed by a previous nominee, contains a star-studded cast, and taps into major sociopolitical issues in a safe way. It points fingers and rages but never really tells us anything about how we got here and what we can do. The film isn't bad -- it just hasn't particularly resonated, and it's disappointing to see it receive recognition in place of more deserving films.

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Of the five films nominated for Best Animated Feature, three are owned by Disney. This is a clear indication of the corporate monopolies that have been developing over past decades in the industry, one of the major factors in the changing landscape of film production and distribution. Rather than representing the diverse possibilities of what a feature animated film can be, we are presented with three products from the same company, and only one film that steps outside the realm of family entertainment.

We've already touched on the most significant problem with the upcoming Academy Awards: eight of its categories will not be included in the live broadcast. According to the Hollywood Reporter, this decision was made under pressure from ABC, who wanted even more awards cut. A similar proposition was made in 2019 for the 91st Ceremony, but it was withdrawn following an extremely negative reception. The decision this year has been equally negatively received, with vocal protests from film professionals like Steven Spielberg, Jane Campion, and Guillermo Del Toro, but to no avail.

For a ceremony that allegedly commemorates the craft of cinematic art, the exclusion of some of the most important crafts is an attack on the collaborative spirit of cinema. Film pioneer Maya Deren noted in her writings on film theory that there are only two primary instruments (or, in less academic jargon, processes) in the film form: photography and editing. All else is add-on to these two essential principles. Yet the award for Editing -- the process that literally makes the film -- will be absent entirely from the televised event.

In the practice of narrative filmmaking as we've come to know it, the score, production design, makeup, et al. are essential in creating the experience of a film. One of the beautiful things about the Oscars has been its recognition of the many crafts involved in the making of a movie. Without that spirit, it's possible the Academy Awards will lose its legitimacy in the eyes of the film community.

Academy Awards: Should You Tune In?Academy Awards lined up

Ultimately, whether tuning in to the broadcast is worth it depends on the viewer. For fans of Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Jane Campion, Guillermo del Toro, and other filmmaking giants, seeing the great films that have been nominated receive recognition could make the whole ordeal worthwhile. Musical fans and Spielberg nuts will want to see if West Side Story (2021) gets rewarded for breathing new life into a dwindling cinematic tradition Anyone interested in the fight for gender equality in the arts might want to see if Jane Campion makes history as the first woman to win Best Director twice. There is also, of course, the tried and true viewing tradition of hate-watching, an activity that could unify demographics as disparate as those who hate the Oscars because Titane wasn't nominated for Best Picture and those who hate the Oscars because Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) wasn't nominated for Best Picture.

For those weary of the ethos behind award shows or simply frustrated by the type of movie that gets nominated, there is no harm in sitting this one out. Whether a film wins, loses, or gets snubbed altogether is not going to change the personal experience you had with it, which -- past the prestige, red carpets, snub lists, and anticipation -- is what really matters.

The 94th Academy Awards will air on ABC on March 27, 2022.