Why don't critics, Oscars & audience agree?

Jim Emerson  |  2012-02-10

Why don't the critics, the Oscars and the box-office audience ever seem to agree on the best movies of the year? This question really bugs some people, but I've never understood it, because criticism, intra-industry acclaim and ticket-sales revenue represent such separate and distinct ways of looking at movies. If they all redundantly reinforced the same choices, what would be the point? (Only the money is necessary to the movie business, which regards reviews and awards as simply part of the promotional campaign.) The way I see it, asking why critics, Academy voters and audiences don't agree is like asking why Democrats and Republicans don't choose the same candidates for president (although I once knew a woman who seriously proposed that Ronald Reagan and Geraldine Ferraro would make a great ticket). The obvious reason is: different constituencies want different things.

Audiences want to be entertained, maybe a little inspired. Critics want to be entertained too, of course, but some also seek the greater pleasures of art. For some of us, the hackneyed phrase "mindless entertainment" is a contradiction in terms: how can something be entertaining unless it engages your attention on more than an autonomic level? Oscar voters... well, who the hell knows what they want? But we all want to feel better about ourselves, don't we? Movies, good and bad, can help with that.

Andrew O'Hehir at Salon ("And the Oscar goes to... 'Twilight'!") makes a modest proposal: "What if the Oscars -- an imaginary Oscars, a thought-experiment Oscars, the Oscars of an alternate universe -- honored movies that people actually liked?" His alt.hollywood version would be "an unholy blend of the MTV Movie Awards and the Indiewire critics' poll" in which "Melancholia," "A Separation" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" would go up against "Harry Potter," "Twilight" and "Mission: Impossible."

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