Why more Academy Award controversies erupted this year — and why there’ll probably always be more

As you’ve probably heard, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences can’t do anything right.

At least that might be your impression if you believe the blitz of bad news that has jammed traditional and social media this year.

As next Sunday’s 91st Academy Awards broadcast looms, we’re being reminded that the Oscars organization:

• Tried to marginalize the likes of “Black Panther” in a proposed new Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film category;
• Couldn’t talk anyone into hosting their party, once Kevin Hart bowed out after homophobic tweets from his past surfaced. The big show will go hostless for the first time in three decades, though broadcaster ABC actually hopes the mystery of all that will generate more interest;
• Considered airing performances of just two of the five Original Song nominees on the telecast — until Lady Gaga said “no go.” If you want me to perform her huge hit “Shallow,” she warned, then all the nominees get to sing. And so they shall.
• Announced that four of its 24 awards would be handed out during commercial breaks, not live. Hollywood professionals were outraged that categories such as Cinematography and Film Editing would be getting second-class treatment. After being battered by unions, past winners and this year’s nominees, the academy backed off that plan Friday afternoon.

It’s nothing new for Oscar’s embattled caretakers. In recent years, the Academy has endured:

• The #OscarsSoWhite controversy, fueled by years of African-American artists feeling overlooked;
• The “oopsy” announcement of “La La Land” as Best Picture (sorry about that, “Moonlight”);
• And the public disgrace of past Oscar-campaign manipulation master Harvey Weinstein — a fall that helped propel the #metoo movement in Hollywood.

So the Oscars, like a poorly plotted disaster movie, are in perpetual crisis mode.

“Are the Oscars still relevant?” rhetorically asked Sasha Stone, editor and main content-provider for the Oscar-tracking website awardsdaily.com. “I think we’re going through such a major shift in our culture that the Oscars seem to fit better in how things used to be, rather than how things are changing and how things are.

“The hivemind pressure on them to satisfy every requirement, to right all the wrongs of society and satisfy every person whining and complaining about them is just too much pressure,” Stone said, “compared with what they were designed to do.” Which was, of course, to celebrate and promote the best work being done in film.

But that mission dates back to a time well before television entered the picture — and the annual push for the three-hour-plus telecast to earn glowing reviews, boost ad revenue and make industry moguls smile by driving dollars to their properties.

Decisions to feed those often conflicting beasts, however, can help alienate:

• The show’s loyal base of serious movie lovers, who savor every envelope-ripping moment;
• The much wider general audience the show needs to woo to grow profits;
• Its own members and the industry artisans they represent, for whom it’s a professional recognition kind of thing;
• Or all of the above — who often have very different ideas of what the Academy Awards should be.

Most of this year’s crises are being driven by money – and by extension, the show’s ratings.

Last year’s 26.5 million viewers were the lowest number ever. While any other non-sporting event would be lucky to secure that many eyeballs, the past decade’s downward trend inspired the attempt to include the “popular” movie category to lure back fans of movies that sell lots of tickets.

And trimming musical performances and some award categories — along with dropping the host, their monologue and “entertaining” stunts  — fall in line with ABC’s belief that normal people can’t take more than three hours of famous folks applauding themselves.

“The academy is trying to please several masters at once,” said Anne Thompson, editor-at-large and resident Oscars expert at the movie website IndieWire.com.

Meanwhile, the Academy Museum has been taking years and millions to build on Mid-City L.A.’s Museum Row.

“So they can’t afford to lose the income that the Oscars brings them,” Thompson said. “ABC has read them the challenge to make this a more commercial and accessible, and shorter, Oscar show. But they made a mistake in picking the Cinematography and Film Editing categories to cut (down), because that argument is unsaleable.”

Maybe ABC’s right, and the chatter generated by such controversy will turn into ratings.

A more likely viewership booster may be the fact that, as it turned out, Oscar didn’t need a Popular Film category after all. “Black Panther,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Star Is Born,” — all nine-figure domestic grossers — are in the Best Picture race.

The organization’s often snooty, hard-to-control voting members also made room for more ethnic diversity this year. They gave the Spanish-language drama “Roma” a leading 10 nominations and even stopped snubbing director Spike Lee, who snagged his first directing nomination despite years of trend-setting and critical accolades.

“Even ‘Roma,’ which has been seen (on Netflix) in 190 countries and has Spanish-speakers all over the world rooting for it,” Thompson noted. “The academy has moved toward more international members and more diverse members, and the nominees are huge all over the world. I think there will be more viewers as a result of that, not as a result of all this controversy.”

Female filmmakers, however, didn’t fare as well. The director category is all male once more. And the Makeup and Hairstyling award — one of the few non-acting categories often dominated by women — had to be rescued from being banished to the commercial break.

Still, Thompson said, this year’s diverse nominees prove Oscar has the ability to fix some problems in a positive way, and might even manage a ratings upswing.

“The movies that are up for Best Picture are the ones that people care about. And, this year, the ones that they might have an actual rooting interest in happen to be much more popular at the box office,” she said.

Whether that happens or not, expect the academy to get mired in more controversies as the 21st Century stumbles on. Why? Because, unlike some other institutions we could point fingers at, its members will try to actually do something about each round of criticism that arises.

“Little by little, the movies became more critically acclaimed. The Academy brought in more people of color and tried to change their membership. They were trying to adjust,” Stone said of the organization’s response to #OscarsSoWhite and other complaints.

“But I think people see that,” she said, “and that makes them more vulnerable to criticism and attention than they would be if they were just a group that nobody cared about.”