The Los Angeles Times ran an article a week before Oscar Sunday which claimed the majority of Oscar voters were "overwhelmingly white." In their survey, they claim Oscar voters are 94% white and 77% male. In addition, blacks make up only 2% of the group whereas Latinos are less than 2% of the group. This isn't exactly news, it's something we have all pretty much known, but these statistics officially show us something is a little wrong with the picture.
The members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences have always been considered conservative, and while they have been showing a little more attention to independent and mainstream films (such as Inception), it's only done so to appeal to the younger demographic. In the end, the Oscars generally play their picks extremely safe. In this year's nominations, they went with typical "Academy" fare with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, despite the fact that most critics dismissed the film. The film, which focuses on a family after 9/11 and explores a father and son relationship, was obviously memorable enough for those "old white" Oscar voters.
The Oscars, however, still managed to pull in 39.3 million viewers on Sunday. The world tunes into the Oscars because they consider this to be the biggest and most important film event of the year, despite the fact that the Oscars are the biggest and most important public relations event of the year. The problem with the Oscars, however, isn't that they continually pick an overall "safe" film. The Oscars don't like taking risks or going outside their comfort zone; in addition to their staggering statistics, Oscar voters were declared to have a median age of 62, with only 14% of the membership being younger than 50! So, it's no real wonder why actors like Michael Fassbender were grossly overlooked for their work last year. Michael Fassbender starred in Shame, a film in which he plays a man addicted to sex. The pitch of that film alone shows us why he was overlooked; Oscar voters are just too damn old and don't care. They rather play it safe and go with films that make them feel good. That's why films like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are still getting nominated.
The real problem with the Oscars, however, is how their voting process works. It's extremely complicated (probably so the "safest" film wins) but Oscar voters aren't required to watch all nominated films to vote for Best Picture. Now, it's pretty much impossible to keep tabs on 5,765 members, but it's also absurd to think that these voters don't need to watch these films before voting. These voters are all sent screeners of these films, but in a year where nine films were nominated for Best Picture, most of which ran over two hours in length, it's easy for voters to skip to films that have received the most acclaim. This, however, prevents them from seeing all the work that specific year and overlooking films they might otherwise vote for. I have a real world example for this. I worked for a man last year (who just so happens to be a white male over the age of 70) who told me he voted for The King's Speech last year. I wasn't bothered by the fact that he voted for that particular film, but was extremely troubled by the fact that he didn't even see many of the other contenders. In fact, last year The King's Speech faced stiff competition from The Social Network, so if you're not going to watch all the other films nominated, it might strike you to at least watch The Social Network, the one another film being praised by others. Instead, he decided to skip on The Social Network (it didn't seem like his type of film) and he voted for The King's Speech. The biggest problem I have with this is that he ended up watching The Social Network several months later and preferred it over The King's Speech.
So, how many times has this happened in the history of the Oscars? It's disturbing to know that a film can gain a lot of momentum because of nasty marketing campaigns and sway voters into voting for that particular film, while they skip over all the other nominees. In this real world case, I found out first hand the Oscars have a serious problem, and while it doesn't really matter who wins, it's still a little disturbing to know that a film will go down as Best Picture illegitimately.
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