Am I The Only Person Incredibly Bored With This Awards Season?

 

---

This repost by Robin Hitchcock appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

---

When nominations for the 87th Academy Awards came out, I should have been on the edge of my seat. I normally completely buy into all the Oscars hype. But this awards season just hasn’t been doing it for me, and now that the Oscar noms are out the stage is set for the Boringest Academy Awards In History (or at least since that year Lord of the Rings won everything).

Honestly, the most exciting nomination to me is “Everything is Awesome” getting a nod for Best Original Song. But everything is not awesome on this nominees list:

• Eight out of the nine Best Picture nominees are primarily about white dudes. Two of them are historical dramas about real life white dude geniuses.
• Selma, the only Best Picture nominee about people of color, was shut out in all the other major categories (its director Ava DuVernay would have been the first Black woman nominated in the category).

 

• All of the acting nominees are white.

 

• There are no women nominated for best director or in either screenplay category.
• Only one of the Best Actress nominations is from one of the Best Picture nominees, whereas four of the five Best Actor nominations are for Best Picture-nominated films. As I wrote in 2013, this trend suggests that movies with significant roles for women aren’t considered as great or important by the Academy. This year, it is even worse: four of the five Best Actresses were in movies not nominated outside of the acting categories.

 

• Note that the one Best Actress nominee from a Best Picture nominee is Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything, as the love interest to White Dude Genius #2.

 

And aside from my disappointment at the total lack of representation in the slate of nominees, I’m also just BORED by these movies. The Grand Budapest Hotel tied with Birdman for total number of nominations. The Grand Budapest Hotel was released all the way back in February, before last year’s Oscars even aired, and I had no idea it was even in contention. And I still have no idea why. I fell asleep trying to watch that movie no less than three times. I thought Boyhood was mediocre (although I’m glad Patricia Arquette was nominated). Birdman was great, but I’d rather be rooting for it as an offbeat dark horse instead of a front runner in an incredibly weak field.

 

The past few years I’ve mounted my own attempts at what Sarah D. Bunting calls the “Oscars Death Race” by trying to see every nominated film. I’ve never even come close to succeeding (it is hard to do in any circumstance, but basically impossible in South Africa), but through the effort I’ve seen a lot of great movies I would have otherwise missed. (I also subjected myself to The Wolf of Wall Street, but it has still been a net positive.)

I’m not sure I’m going to even bother this year. I mean, maybe one or both of the White Dude Genius Period Piece movies will actually turn out to be lovely. Maybe American Sniper will be this year’s Captain Phillips, a “dad movie” that is actually an incredibly well-crafted piece of cinema. Maybe Whiplash, which I honestly had not even heard of before today, will be my favorite movie of the year.

 

But I’m not optimistic. My love of Awards Season pomp and circumstance is waning in the face of my growing cynicism about Hollywood. Do I really want to throw more money at movies about white dudes just because the white dudes in the Academy voted for them? Maybe I should save my Oscars Death Race bib for next year.

How do you feel about the Oscar nominations? What would you have rather seen get recognition this year?