I remember being really upset when Forrest Gump (a trite, manipulative film that did everything except kick a puppy to get you to cry) beat Pulp Fiction (which couldn’t have cared less if you cried or not) for the Best Picture Oscar of 1994. Who in their right mind couldn’t see that Pulp Fiction was going to be a landmark piece of film for the ages, and Forrest Gump was a special effect in search of a story? Well, duh, the Academy, that’s who.

Ever since then, I’ve vowed not to become emotionally invested in the self-congratulatory fellatio that is the Oscars. Because, as many have noted before, the Academy Awards have far more to do with politics than they do with actual artistic achievement. Not, obviously, politics in the sense that it’s usually used in the newspapers, but personal politics – the politics of being liked.

Long ago, movie studios realized that the only consistent presence in movies was personality. Most often this was actors, but every now and then a true personality director (Hitchcock, Spielberg, etc.) and, even less rarely, writer (I can only think of one off-hand: Charlie Kaufman) comes along. But actors, by virtue of being in front of the camera all the time, are the easiest thing for audiences to latch onto, and studios know this.

Actors, however, don’t generally move to Los Angeles because they are emotionally and spiritually centered. In spite of being among the most physically perfect specimens on the planet, they are tremendously insecure. I have a cousin, an actress hopeful, who lives in Hollywood, and she is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. But she was utterly convinced that she needed plastic surgery to “fix” her already stunning face and body. And she was, from what I could tell, the rule rather than the exception.

This is not to dis actors (well, not entirely), but to put things in perspective. These awards are given by a group made up disproportionately by actors, a group that really, really wants you to love them. And they have proven time and again that they will make decisions based more on who they would like to be seen at a party with than who did a better job. The perennial example pulled out time and again is Citizen Kane losing to How Green Was My Valley, but I hold more of a grudge over the Academy’s continual unwillingness to recognize comedies as not worthy of recognition. I’d venture to say that The 40-Year-Old Virgin was at least as good as the nominated films last year, but, of course, comedy is not serious acting. (No pun intended.)

Fortunately, the Oscars is not a lowest-common-denominator awards show like the (ugh) Golden Globes or the Billboard Music Awards, which appear to be based on letting a junior high school class pick from a year-end list of top earners. But let’s stop pretending that they are about “artistic achievement,” okay?

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