Why do we still care about the Oscars if we have often not seen the nominated films?

“Greta and Margot, although winning at the box office but not taking home the gold can hurt, their millions of fans love them,” Hillary Clinton wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

The dramatic tone of the former US Secretary of State could lead one to believe, without the necessary context, that she is referring to some great injustice, to some violation of the rights of these two women.

But the publication was from the day this year's Oscar nominees were announced, and Clinton was referring to the fact that Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie were left out of the nominations in the directing and best leading actress categories, respectively, for

Barbie

.

Clinton's message was shared by hundreds of thousands of people and became an object of both validation and ridicule.

The former Democratic presidential candidate was not the only one who considered these omissions scandalous;

Ryan Gosling,

Barbie

's co-star who was nominated as a supporting actor and who is usually very discreet about these issues, expressed in a statement his disappointment at the absence of Gerwig and Robbie.

And so, like them, thousands of people saturated social networks for weeks with their discontent.

The debate generated by this year's Hollywood awards season, with the

Barbie

nominations as the main topic, shows that, despite the drop in viewership, these ceremonies continue to generate an emotional connection and that a celebrity is nominated or no to an award continues to mark the cultural conversation.

More information

'Barbie' and the false construction of feminist justice: that Margot Robbie has not been nominated is not a problem

“We are interested in these awards, essentially, because they tell us that we should be interested,” says Robert Thompson, professor of Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University (New York) and author of six books on the entertainment industry, via video call. .

For the academic, one of the reasons behind the obsession they generate is that, over the decades, they have acquired a status of cultural tradition that has allowed them to survive in the era of social networks and

streaming

.

Thompson considers awards ceremonies to be “precursors” to many modern formats, in the sense that they were the space where audiences could see their favorite stars in their most intimate settings.

It is a monopoly that they lost years ago, since seeing a famous person having breakfast in his pajamas became an everyday occurrence thanks to

reality shows.

and social networks.

“We can now observe celebrities outside of their fictional existences, which means that the excitement of an awards show is not nearly as great as it used to be,” the researcher notes.

Elizabeth Taylor admires her first Oscar at a party after the gala.

The actress won her first statuette in 1960 for the film 'A Marked Woman'.

Seeing the big stars of the time was an incentive to watch these ceremonies.Bettmann (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

In last year's Oscar broadcast, the television audience rose 12% compared to the 2022 edition. However, the free fall in the last decade is notorious and the three previous ceremonies (2021, 2022 and 2023) are the ones with the lowest audience in the entire history of these awards.

Thompson, whom the

Associated Press

dubbed “the ambassador of pop culture,” believes that awards ceremonies inevitably begin to look anachronistic: “If we took color out of an awards broadcast in the 21st century, it would look virtually the same.” than one from the fifties or sixties.”

The author maintains, however, that it would be a mistake to call them “irrelevant.”

“Even though they aren't attracting as many millions of viewers, they are still outperforming their time slot, still getting the highest ratings of the week, and are some of the most watched shows of the entire year,” he clarifies.

In parallel with the decrease in viewers, in recent years the awards have been in the spotlight for the lack of diversity.

The Golden Globes, the second most watched event after the Oscars, did not even have a live broadcast in 2022 after the NBC network withdrew its sponsorship due to allegations of low ethnic representation in the nominees from previous years.

The Oscars, for their part, came under pressure from campaigns such as

#OscarsSoWhite

,

which sought a greater presence of non-white people in the acting categories, as well as the media push for more women to be considered in directing and scriptwriting.

“Oscar voters have long been disproportionately white, male and old-fashioned, and their selections have frequently been mocked,”

writer and television producer David Cox noted in a

Guardian column.

In 2023, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian to win an Oscar in the best actress category for 'Everything at once everywhere', and the second non-white person to do so since Halle Berry achieved it for 'Monster's Ball' ', in 2002.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin (FilmMagic)

These controversies led the Film Academy to diversify its membership to increase the participation of women and ethnic minorities and for this to be reflected in the nominated and awarded films.

For this reason, Cox believes that, beyond discussions about cinematographic quality, the awards are “an impressive reflection of current social concerns.”

It is in this context that many assumed that Greta Gerwig, who made a female empowerment comedy that exceeded a billion dollars at the box office, was going to be among the nominees for best direction, and that her absence caused so much outrage.

Although voices such as Helen Mirren, who plays the narrator in

Barbie

, also emerged, they have tried to downplay the importance of the nominations and believe that the film has already secured her place in history.

“The fantastic thing is that

Barbie

was the highest-grossing film that Warner Bros. has had in its entire existence. Do you remember who won best film of the year last year?” the Oscar-winning actress said three days ago in statements to

Variety

.

Awards ceremonies like the Oscars are then a cocktail of celebrity worship, cultural tradition and a kaleidoscope of social debates that is placed, according to Robert Thompson, in “the context of a major sporting event.”

For the academic, the closest thing to the emotion generated by these ceremonies is that of a soccer match, because the directors, performers, screenwriters and other nominees compete live for the statuettes and there is always the adrenaline that something unexpected could happen ( like when, in 2017, Faye Dunaway announced that the winner of the Oscar for best picture was

La La Land

instead of

Moonlight

).

“And even if the show drags on, even if you have to endure some poorly written introductions, you never know when something might happen.

Chris Rock could get slapped.

And there is always that promise,” explains Thompson.