THE ACADEMY AWARDS:  OSCAR NIGHT

The Academy Awards, often referred to as “The Oscars” are given by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), a non-profit organization that was started in 1927 to “improve the artistic quality of the film medium, provide a common forum for the various branches and crafts of the industry, foster cooperation in technical research and cultural progress, and pursue a variety of other stated objectives.”  Year after year, the Oscar telecast is one of the most widely viewed annual media events in the world, originating from the United States.  It has an audience of just over one billion people in 90 countries worldwide.  Sure winning an Oscar is prestigious, but have you ever considered the economic benefits of the Oscars?

The Academy:  The TV program earns AMPAS $2 million per year.

The Television Network:  ABC makes millions by selling advertising during the show for $10,000 per second.  Expensive stars, who would never otherwise appear on television, will work for free.  The show itself is relatively cheap to produce compared to a movie or mini-series.

The Movie Industry:  The telecast promotes Hollywood movies and the entire broadcast is virtually a commercial for the previous year’s films.

The Winners:  Prestige, truly international stardom and economic benefits result from winning an award though grateful recipients value the peer recognition as much as many of the more tangible benefits.

The Film winning the Best Picture Oscar:  This film can usually count on increased box office revenues of $20 to $50 million in the weeks after the telecast, providing the film is still being exhibited in theaters.  Examples of winners that have directly benefited from Oscar wins include 1990’s Dances with wolves ($48 million) and Driving Miss Daisy ($32 million).

If the film is already available on video, rentals and sales of the video will increase, but this has a negligible influence on total earnings.  1991’s big winner, Silence of the Lambs, had already been out on video for several months and was showing on Pay-Per-View when the film won in the “big five” categories, including Actor, Actress, Screenplay, and Director.  For this reason, Hollywood studios will usually release their serious Oscar contenders in December, both to capitalize on the huge Christmas market and so that the film is “fresh” in the minds of AMPAS voters in the new year.

The Best Actor/Actress/Director awards have limited box office value.  The other awards have virtually none except as an advertising come-on to try and lure people into the theater.

List the top money-making films for the current year and then list the films nominated for Oscars in that same year. 

1.                   How do you explain the discrepancies between highly profitable films and those that are critically honored?

2.                   How do films reflect the social priorities and ideological concerns of the times?

3.                  Judging by the Oscar winners in the 1990s and early 2000s, what are today’s social priorities and ideological concerns?

Remember to put your responses in the corresponding etudes

assignment shell.