Oscars kill Creativity.

With the Oscar nominations due this Monday, the 13th, I tend to highlight the fact how the Academy is highly skewed in their nomination and choices, it is pretty clear that the Oscars tend to kill creativity. How? Let's find out!

                                                  

To begin with the prominent awards in acting, the Academy is in love to nominate and award the characters based on real-life personalities or based on the book or on characters based on period dramas. For instance, the biggest snub of the decade was Glenn Close losing out the Best Actress for 'The Wife', to Olivia Colman for a period drama 'The Favourite'.  Another instance was the much deserved Charlotte Rampling losing to Brie Larson at the Oscars 2015 where Charlotte was nominated for a fictional drama '45 Years' and Larson for 'Room' based on a book by the same name. This year also there is a huge chance that in spite of clearly a superlative performance by Scarlett Johanson in Marriage Story(a fictional story),  the Academy will be rewarding Renee Zellweger for 'Judy' or Charlize Theron for 'Bombshell' both of whom are based on real-life characters of Judy Garland and the journalist Megyn Kelly. So, the main issue in rewarding these artist portraying real-life people is the fact that (in my opinion), the actors tend to LIMIT themselves to those characters and failed to go beyond the limitations of the personality which may/may not help them evolve because playing such characters is more about impersonification than adding creativity and with the Academy rewarding such characters only prompts the producers and directors to make more biopics that shall serve the academy more than the audience. A similar pattern was observed in male actor category where the magnificent William Dafoe was the only nomination from a fictional film and the rest were based on real-life personality or a book. Hence, here the Academy is profusely skewed to book adaptations or biopics. Hence it appears that the director and the producers if at all consider making a fictional movie they go for books rather than their own minds because of the Academy's love for biopics and books. Hence, the Academy should reconsider its guidelines because the releases we have nowadays, there will be a time when we shall only see biopics and book adaptations and the creative minds will go extinct.

Similarly, in the Costumes category, the academy is highly skewed to rewarding period or fantasy drama. What the Academy fails to understand and also stated by fashion designer Jurgen Doering is the fact that in the race to award the more lavish or the more stylish costumes, the academy clearly forgets to reward those designers who design costumes based on the character’s nature, for example, Mary Zophres’ costume for Mia (Emma Stone) in La La Land was aptly done as it matched her character’s positivity and even dwelled with the surroundings. Not only Mia’s but also Sebastian’s costumes matched his character, his negativity and hence it can be said that the rightful recipient should have been Mary Zophres. 

                                                    

Hence with 3 poignant categories being awarded on the basis of something not very appropriate, the Academy should reconsider its guidelines because the releases we have nowadays, there will be a time when we shall only see biopics and book adaptations and the creative minds will go extinct. For example, touted as this year's best Oscar bet, "The Irishman" is also based on the book, 'I heard you paint houses', which in turn is based on the life of Frank Sheeran or The Irishman. Hence, with such adaptations taking the front seat for the Oscars, the Academy may not be affected or feel the need to change their guidelines.

                                                      
Moreover, since a movie's success is usually determined by the 'Oscars' it takes home or the nominations, the Academy should be better at the allotment of movies in their respective categories!