The Oscars are never just about the movies

What a difference a month makes.

In late January, Netflix's narco-musical Emilia Pérez was riding high with 13 Academy Award nominations, and was widely considered the front-runner for best picture. Its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, who'd made history by becoming the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for an acting Oscar, seemed on a glide path to making history again by winning best actress.

Then, a number of offensive, years-old tweets resurfaced in which Gascón had expressed racist views toward George Floyd, Muslims and diversity at the Oscars — views that were described as "inexcusable" even by her own director — and both star and film lost their awards luster. Until this week, it seemed unlikely that Gascón would even attend the awards ceremony on Sunday.

None of this has much to do with either cinema or art. It's about real-world, off-screen events and behavior, and how they're received by Oscar voters.

There's a long history of extracurricular considerations figuring into Oscar voting, going back at least to the 1940s, and voters' annoyance at an arrogant 26-year-old tyro named Orson Welles. An interloper from live theater, Welles was convinced he knew better than the Hollywood establishment, and it turns out he did — no one today would argue that John Ford's 1941 How Green Was My Valley can hold a candle to Welles' groundbreaking Citizen Kane — but Valley took home that year's Oscars for best picture and director.

Gene Kelly in a photo taken during the filming of the movie <em>Singin' in the Rain. </em>

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Real-world politics, a movie's subject matter, genre, release date, perceived momentum, and perversely, what won the previous year, can all affect a film's chances at the Oscars. 1952's Singin' In The Rain, arguably the greatest movie musical ever, wasn't even nominated for best picture, largely because another Gene Kelly musical, An American In Paris, had triumphed a year earlier. Apocalypse Now had the bad luck to immediately follow another Vietnam War film, The Deer Hunter.

Immense box office popularity can be a negative with awards voters – witness Steven Spielberg's cinematically inventive E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial losing out to Richard Attenborough's comparatively stodgy 1982 biopic Gandhi. Even Attenborough thought the voters got that one wrong, as he didn't hesitate to tell interviewers for years after. (Spielberg would finally win both picture and director for his 1993 biopic, Schindler's List.)

When voters didn't even nominate Christopher Nolan's 2008 Batman epic The Dark Knight for best picture, the snub was regarded as so egregious that the Academy expanded the best picture field to make room for blockbusters, though the Academy never formally acknowledged The Dark Knight's role in the change. (Following in Spielberg's footsteps, Nolan eventually triumphed, too, just last year, winning director and picture for, yup … a biopic: Oppenheimer.)

All of which is to say that sure, I'll be rooting for my faves as things play out on Sunday's telecast — it starts an hour earlier than usual this year, at 7 p.m. ET — but I'll be watching as much for the gowns and the gaffes as to see what wins.
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