Remember when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards? Probably. Do you remember that Rock was up there to present Best Documentary Feature to Summer of Soul? Probably not. Every year, without fail, awards season rolls around, bringing with it a host of controversies, surprises, and moments of virality. The cycle goes like this: every January, a new crop of films are nominated, and each March, a chosen few enter the halls of Oscars history. Throughout, devoted fans grieve the exclusion of their favorite celebrities, critics scoff at misguided choices, die-hard cinephiles criticize the homogeneity of the picks, and casual movie-goers don’t recognize half of the names. Often, it feels as though nobody leaves a winner. 

So, who are the Oscars really for? The overwhelming answer, according to New School industry insiders and young filmmakers: the Oscars aren’t for people who care about movies, and they certainly aren’t for the people who make them. 

Leo Goldsmith, a film critic, advisor to the selection committee of the New York Film Festival, and assistant professor of screen studies at The New School, believes that the Oscars reflect a political environment that follows patterns of precedence — the award is an aggregator of corporate interests and generally doesn’t indicate artistic value. However, Goldsmith argues, there have been notable exceptions — moments where the Academy broke the mold and got it right.

Nathan Fitch, an independent filmmaker and assistant professor of screen studies at The New School, has worked with The New Yorker as a documentary video producer and is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. For Fitch, the Oscars are a fact of the industry — a hotbed of wealth, beset by controversy — but a celebration nonetheless. 

“With the fires in LA, and the strikes, and everything else that has happened to Hollywood and the whole machine … they’ve had such a hard couple of years that I don’t begrudge them. I think they need something to celebrate right now. We all need something,” Fitch said. 

Talia Lugacy, an independent filmmaker and assistant professor of screen studies at The New School, argues that corporations pull the strings at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre year after year. “It’s a way of making money. [Showering] certain films with attention … generates publicity and people go see the thing,” Lugacy said. The ceremony itself is a smokescreen. “You don’t get to see any of the inner workings of the business. You don’t see corporate consolidation … you don’t see that there are like five people who are in charge of most of the films that get made.”

Alexandra Zvagelsky is a fourth-year studying screen studies with a minor in screenwriting. She has directed two short films that have premiered at The New Screen Fest. “I’d love to see my name on that little brass statue just as much as the next guy,” Zvagelsky said, but she sees her chances of ending up at the ceremony as one in a million. Zvagelsky echoes Lugacy and Goldsmith’s emphasis on the monetary motivation behind the award. “The award is for those who stand to benefit from them financially,” she said. “Art, and the people, are the last things those involved truly care about.”

Money is what drives the ceremony — that much is reflected in the entry fee. It requires an absurd amount of cash just to have your name in the conversation, but generally, studios see a return on investment. A 2014 study from the University of California Los Angeles Department of Sociology found that more Oscar nominations do result in a higher profit at the box office. “I know someone who won an Academy Award for a short [film], and I think the amount of money they spent for their campaign was more than the budget of the film … and it wasn’t a cheap film to make,” Fitch said. 

Money means dresses, diamonds, and a slew of black suits, but the shiny world that surrounds the Oscars is as false as the artistic standards set by the Academy. Fitch argues that this facade mirrors the illusion that cinema itself is capable of producing. “Hollywood and the films that are made there have impacted how we see the world,” he said. The American Dream has been sold through moving images.  If you want an insight into the true nature of Hollywood, Lugacy recommends you look elsewhere. “Watch Mulholland Drive … understand which companies own others. There’s a new merger happening every time you turn around,” Lugacy said. “None of that is reflected in the Oscar show.”

Business isn’t the only factor hiding in the shadows — the Oscars reflect a scattered national consciousness. Each of the ten films nominated for Best Picture cater to a certain audience and serve different corporate interests. Lugacy remarked that the Oscars exemplify the industry’s service of older demographics and “traditional” value systems. “The attempts that they make to pander to younger audiences are very clear,” she explained. This year, nominations for Emilia Perez have been pointed to as politically motivated — a desperate appeal to an LGBTQ+ audience hungry for transgender representation. The Substance and Dune: Part Two, both nominated for Best Picture but not likely to secure the win, could be an attempt to appease fans of their respective genres — horror and science fiction — which have previously been underrepresented in the Academy’s picks. 

Lugacy had an early start in the world of film — she began watching movies at the age of 12, graduated high school early, attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and directed her first feature film at 24. As a teen in the nineties falling headfirst into an obsession with film, Lugacy memorized every single Best Picture winner up to that point. A couple of years later, she watched them all in order, but what she found wasn’t a reverence for the award itself. “What interests me about the Oscars is really only as a mainstream historical reference point,” Lugacy said. “I was fascinated by what I was understanding about the history of not just the industry, but of audiences in relation to the movies that were coming out.” Zvagelsky, a current student of film, agrees with Lugacy, describing the Oscars as a “record of cinema history,” and not much else.

The shifting nature of what is deemed an Oscar-winning film is obvious when looking back at now-obsolete Best Picture winners. Citizen Kane, now widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, was nominated for Best Picture in 1941 — it lost to How Green Was My Valley. “Nobody’s watching that now. No one’s talking about that movie,” Lugacy said. Who knows what we’ll look back on in disbelief — out of this year’s crop, Emilia Perez comes to mind.

“There are so many milestones and so many points at which films that are completely indelible for us were totally stepped over at the time,” Lugacy explained. That fact is both reassuring and infuriating — but, primarily, it’s an indication that the Oscars, and awards in general, don’t indicate artistic truths. One could point to Challengers, I Saw the TV Glow, and DiDi as examples of American films with some staying power that were overlooked by the Academy this year. 

Despite contentions with the Academy and the industry at large, filmmakers broadly acknowledge that an Oscar has the power to do a lot for their careers. “The doors that open for you as a filmmaker once you get that nomination spot, you know, it’s a big deal,” Fitch said. That accolade often remains a permanent prefix to a filmmaker’s name. 

According to Fitch, this power to open doors makes the Oscars a valuable platform for those outside the blockbuster machine and hidden in the rolling credits. “One thing the Oscars is important for is to [spotlight] people who labor in a dark room by themselves and don’t get to go on the talk shows and have their face all over the media.” 

Fitch also emphasizes short films and documentaries as categories that often don’t reach the silver screen — the Academy affords them this rare opportunity. For instance, theaters across the country, including the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the International Film Center, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, screen Oscar-nominated shorts throughout the awards season. 

With the Academy’s power comes a responsibility to highlight the right things, Fitch believes. “You see all of these people canceling DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] programs and buckling under the fear of the Trump administration,” Fitch said. Now more than ever, Hollywood and the filmmaking world have a duty to push for change in terms of what gets seen and who makes those decisions. 

Occasionally, the Academy does get it right. The current race for Best Actress is a refreshing break from the white, American norm. Fernanda Torres, nominated for the Brazilian film I’m Still Here, is one of six Latin American Best Actress nominees in the ceremony’s history. 

This year’s Best Documentary nomination for No Other Land, a collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, is another rare example of a nomination with both a strong political stance and artistic integrity. No Other Land, despite critical acclaim and international distribution, has been unable to secure a distributor in the United States. “The viewership and platform that [No Other Land] gets by being nominated is a big deal for an independent, political film in this moment,” Fitch said. 

It’s not just the nomination or the win that provides a platform. The opportunity to speak in front of a room full of the most influential members of the industry is a rare one. Lugacy references last year’s Oscars as a leading example of making the most of a moment in the spotlight: following The Zone of Interest’s Best International Feature win, director Jonathan Glazer spoke out against the ongoing dehumanization of Palestinians and Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories. “He was talking to the people in the room in which he was standing … not to some audience en masse [whom] he can’t even see.” This was a significant risk, according to Lugacy. “He’s not guaranteed to have a career.” 

Ultimately, you get out of the Oscars exactly what you put in — if you have a stake in industry opinion, or if you’re a filmmaker hoping to make it big, the Oscars might be for you. If you’re a film fanatic with niche taste, the award might not mean much, but its history could be a valuable cache of information. If you’re an independent filmmaker, you’re probably too busy to spare the Academy a moment. As a platform, an opportunity, an illusion, a celebration, a business, and a political game, the Oscars are for anyone willing to engage with the machine.