Remember when the Academy Awards were all about celebrating movies? I do.

Another year, it’s the same old stuff again. Full disclosure: one of the exact reasons why I still watch the Academy Awards at this point is less so to talk about how they celebrate film, but because I gamble on the results with friends. Unsurprisingly, I ended up losing money because I put my money on The Power of the Dog winning Best Picture, and ultimately, it was awarded to CODA. But I think what’s most alarming about the way that the Academy Awards have went this time around is best summed up by how everything was presented: a win that should be historic on the count that a film featuring a deaf cast has been awarded Best Picture, ultimately was overshadowed by many other things.

For many film lovers, it’s been easy to see why they have been similarly jaded by the Academy Awards themselves. A ceremony that poises itself as one who celebrates the best in film all throughout the years, but it’s also one that continually makes a mockery of the films that they celebrate. Whether it be jokes about being halfway through The Power of the Dog (which, is baffling enough, considering the film is only a little over two hours long), a plethora of uncomfortable jokes whether it be Amy Schumer’s “seat filler” delivery, or the obvious Will Smith-Chris Rock slap, this ceremony might just have made a case for what could easily be seen as a complete mockery of what people thought the Academy Awards were supposedly celebrating.

Let’s be real: we’ve never really liked watching the ceremonies themselves at this point, but usually we would come out from each one remembering something about the films that won. Their view count has been slowly dwindling, but they’ve only ever so slightly recovered from the ratings that they faced last year, which were an all-time low. Nonetheless, every time we heard about the films that won, there would always be something we remembered in turn: Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Parasite — three of which all left a lasting impact in the public consciousness in a positive manner. Meanwhile, recent memory has also given us the Green Book Oscar win, which became so widely talked about for other reasons, but shut down the popular belief that “Do the Right Thing would have won Best Picture today.”

Something different seems to have happened this time around with Siân Heder’s CODA winning the Oscar for Best Picture. Something that should be seen as a celebration for the deaf community, as it is the first feature film featuring predominantly deaf actors in lead roles to win Best Picture. In a normal year, with a normal ceremony, we would be remembering this as a historic moment, but such a feat ended up becoming overshadowed by the fact that people chose to focus primarily on the Will Smith-Chris Rock slap. Something that seemed so inconsequential, but supposedly it’s the fact that an altercation occurred on live television and apparently has sparked a national debate, and apparently has now led into Will Smith resigning his Academy membership.

To be perfectly clear, I do not think that I have much else I can contribute to the talks about the slapping incident that have already been said by many others. I say this because I think this moment ultimately is one that should have remained inconsequential, a matter between Will Smith and Chris Rock — particularly as it pertained to an off-handed joke that Chris Rock made about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss.

There’s not much to be said anymore about the slap that has not already been said, but I think it’s alarming how this moment is what also stirred a debate across the globe, because it’s not like America has played a part in normalizing the consumption of extreme violence for high ratings in news reporting. Somehow, it’s a slap that causes such a wide stir, dividing the nation more than anything! That said, it’s going to be the last you’ll see me comment on this incident in this entire article.

Aside from this, I’ve taken issue with CODA’s awards season success leading up to this Best Picture win but seeing how this was what ended up winning the big prize only left me thinking. I think it is great that we have a film headlined by deaf actors (and with a well-deserved Oscar-winning performance from Troy Kotsur) winning the top award, but I also could not help but shake off the fact that the film’s most prominent supporters were primarily hearing critics. Not that this is any surprise to me, but it always seemed that the praises of hearing critics did more than enough to drown out what deaf viewers ultimately had to say, which was something that left a bitter taste in my mouth. It left a bitter taste because we knew that hearing viewers were doing all that they could to paint this as a “crowdpleaser” and a movie that made them cry, but where were the deaf viewers coming in to comment on how this film represents them? Do they not matter if hearing viewers continue showering this with praise as a win for the deaf community, just from the incentive of casting deaf actors as deaf characters? What more did this film leave behind that warranted such a win?

Not that this was even close to the most offensive thing to happen (it’s only mildly inconsequential at best that a mediocre or a bad film wins Best Picture) on what was a truly embarrassing broadcast all around, especially when you’re considering the fiasco of the haphazard decision to put Best Actor in last as if Chadwick Boseman was set to win the Oscar. The “In Memoriam” segment, which normally leaves us a moment of silence as we pay tribute to the numerous talents we’ve lost over the past year, while a song plays over the montage, somehow was done even more tastelessly than it was last year — focusing on gospel singers as they dance along to the song that they perform. In turn, it was just awkward enough because it felt there wasn’t enough focus on the late talents, which somehow the famously rushed montage from last year managed to prioritize.

As for other embarrassing occurrences that the Academy Awards themselves have ended up giving us this year around, perhaps it was the supposed need to shorten the ceremony — relegating certain awards to be announced before everything started. Supposedly, it was done as a means of allowing more time for the audience to engage with the hosts, but this was a spectacularly failed effort that ended up resulting in what was the longest ceremony since the last time Jimmy Kimmel hosted. The award speeches were clumsily edited into the ceremony itself, but supposedly it was Disney’s insistence that these categories be announced early on, as apparently it was the audiences that do not care to see tech awards anymore, and just celebrities. In turn, it just felt outright disrespectful to the very craft of making movies, rather than a moment to celebrate them, but it’s even more baffling when looking into Disney’s rationale for doing this: supposedly they are minor categories that audiences do not pay any mind to, even though the film that ended up winning most of these awards was none other than Dune, maybe the biggest audience hit out of all the nominated films this year.

This is ultimately what prompts us to ask, what happened exactly? Why has the Academy Awards now become a mockery of the craft behind the making of these films? It wasn’t only enough that there was a need to speed through the ceremony but taking a pot shot at the slow pacing of The Power of the Dog (ironically, the seventh shortest movie nominated for Best Picture at 126 minutes), taking a jab at The Last Duel’s expected awards season presence, and now a popularity contest in the form of the Oscars Fan Favorite and the Oscars Cheer Moment. Supposedly these were initiatives that would allow audiences to gauge with them even more, as you can’t help but feel like Disney wanted this to be something of a consolation prize for Spider-Man: No Way Home not being nominated for anything other than Best Visual Effects. Zack Snyder ended up winning both top prizes, but ultimately, what did any of this mean?

We’ve seen how Jimmy Kimmel and Kevin Smith reacted at the lack of a Best Picture nomination for Spider-Man: No Way Home, but to appease the people who wanted these movies nominated for Best Picture is also to insult the core of celebrating the craft of movies to begin with. It isn’t a matter of whether or not superhero movies deserved their shot at Best Picture (we’ve been through this already with Black Panther and Joker being nominated), but it speaks numbers to what audiences have decided they can find tangible as the quality of the nominated films in Best Picture has never changed: for every great movie that gets its shot, there’s always at least a few films in the slate every year that don’t really stack up.

You can deem it snobbery to write off the lack of superhero movies in Best Picture as they only get bigger every year, but even if these movies were supposedly the audience favourites, what would it mean to the future of filmmakers as the audiences who want these movies up so consistently end up writing off local storytellers as being “for the elites?” Maybe it speaks more from the mind of an aspiring filmmaker in me, but filmmaking was never all about money or satisfying fan theories in the form of mega-blockbuster franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars and the like. It was always a matter of letting stories of all sorts make their way to the screen and reach the audiences that they need to, and if it just so happened that they went a step further than what we once planned, that’d be an amazing thing.

There’s always been the common complaint, even by former Oscar hosts about the films nominated for Best Picture in some way. Jimmy Kimmel framed The Power of the Dog, which historically is the first film directed by a woman to receive more than 12 nominations, as “a movie that received 12 nominations for all the people who watched it” as he went on to lambast Don’t Look Up as being “too serious.” And of course, he brings up Spider-Man: No Way Home as a world event that everyone came by to see, which warrants a Best Picture nomination more than both films (news flash, it does not!). But I think it’s also exhausting that we run through this sort of discussion every year because it’s not an especially new insight. It’s not a new insight because we’ve only seen how it grew greatly over the years (and especially during COVID-19 that such audiences would flock even to only superhero movies but the same films that are loved by many movie lovers who go out of their way to see stuff that doesn’t get the same traction remain favoured by the Academy Awards above all else. But to say this disparity between general audience interests and those of movie lovers is reflective of the Academy Awards’ being out of touch isn’t true in the slightest.

It isn’t true whatsoever especially as film festival audience favourites like The Power of the Dog, Belfast (both of which won the audience-voted People’s Choice Awards over at the Toronto International Film Festival), CODA (the favourite of the Sundance Film Festival), or big studio releases like Dune, West Side Story, or King Richard were nominated this year. Adding to that, Don’t Look Up became one of Netflix’s most-watched films within days of its initial release on the platform, but supposedly these movies are all apparently what we deem “inaccessible” to the general audience, and the fact this belief continually is promoted by people only does more to divide the same audiences who only watch superhero movies and those who simply like watching movies from all around the globe. But then again, it couldn’t also surprise me there’s a tinge of ethnocentrism that fuels these beliefs, especially as we’ve had Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s wonderful Drive My Car nominated for Best Picture.

Over the years, the Academy Awards supposedly finds another way to make a farce of itself in a moment that should be what incentivises audiences who don’t normally seek out what they tend to go out for, by catering to the exact audiences who never break out of the bubble they make of their viewing habits. Of course, we’ve seen the aftereffect of Moonlight winning Best Picture after the La La Land mix-up in 2017, but this year, it seems like talks of CODA winning Best Picture have all been overshadowed by a slap that took place on a live broadcast. Truly, as if anything else ever mattered more on what was an embarrassing night, it could at least be helpful if the Academy Awards could bring someone on board who gave the nominated films the time of the day to host, and someone who just simply loves movies rather than people who take pot shots and punch down on the nominees that could make history.

In short, it’s not the nominated movies that are what’s wrong with the Academy, but the more they try to appeal to the wrong audience, the more they will falter. The films nominated haven’t changed over the years, because we know there’s always a crowd that loves them. But clearly, it’s the insistence that the audience who won’t go out of their way to watch them needs to be watching that matters most — and it’s not helpful at all, it’s just insulting to the craft we gather to celebrate every year.