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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences has announced a new category in
time for next February’s awards ceremony:
“achievement in popular film”. The idea is
[5] that, alongside the time-honoured “Best
Picture” category, there will be another for
films which have a broader appeal:
blockbusters, in other words. Ironically, the
announcement has been anything but
[10] popular. On social media, responses to this
idea have ranged from hostile to very hostile
indeed. Many feel that the once-prestigious
Oscars are dumbing down to the level of the
MTV Awards. What’s next—Best kiss? Loudest
[15] shoot-out? Most skyscrapers flattened by
aliens in a single action sequence?
The concept of the “Hit Oscar” or the
“Popcorn Oscar”, as it has been nicknamed,
raises other questions, too. To start with, who
[20] decides whether or not a film is popular?
What are the criteria or thresholds? And isn’t
it an insult to nominees, the implicit
suggestion being that hit films can’t be artistic
(and vice versa)?
[25] The timing, too, is off. “Black Panther”,
Marvel’s Afrofuturist superhero blockbuster,
could well have been nominated for best
picture in 2019. Indeed, it could well have
won, ……… acknowledging the superhero
[30] boom as well as emphasising just how
successful films with black casts and creative
teams can be. But it is now likely that “Black
Panther” will be shoved into the “popular”
ghetto, and that the best-picture prize will go
[35] to an indie drama. If so, the introduction of a
new category will have helped maintain the
status quo, rather than upending it.
It is understandable that the Oscars’
organisers should want to shake up the
[40] ceremony’s format, bearing in mind how low
its television ratings have fallen. One reason
for this decline, the theory goes, is that best-
picture winners are no longer the films that
the great American public is queuing up to
[45] see.
But if hugely profitable, crowd-pleasing films
aren’t winning best picture these days, it is
not because the Academy’s voters are
becoming more snobbish or sophisticated in
[50] their tastes. It is because Hollywood has
stopped making middlebrow historical epics
that used to be a shoo-in. What the
introduction of the popular category
acknowledges is that there are now hardly
[55] any studio films in the chasm between shiny
comic-book movies and quirky indie
experiments. The industry is producing
nothing for grown-up viewers who want more
scale and spectacle than they can get from a
[60] low-key drama, but who don’t fancy seeing
people in colourful costumes firing laser
beams at each other.
The new division between best picture and
popular picture may be ill-judged, but it
[65] reflects a pre-existing dichotomy between
arthouse and multiplex fare. So have pity on
the poor Academy. If Hollywood studios
weren’t quite so obsessed with superhero
franchises, the Oscars might not be in this
[70] mess in the first place.
Adaptado de: https://www.economist.com/prospero/2018/08 /11/the-academy-announces-a-misguided-newcategory. Acesso em: 08 ago. 2018.
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