Why Are Animated Movies Looked Down Upon Academy Members?

      Every year when Oscar season rolls around the usual fanfare comes alive. Award premieres are taken place with directors and crew, interviews flood movie sites and DVD screeners are sent out to every academy member. And when the DVD screeners reach the houses of those members, one type of movie always gets thrown into the back of the pile if you're not either a fan of animation or actually apart of the animation industry. The animated movies. It's the one movie they don't want to touch. They hand it off to their kids while they're off watching REAL CINEMA. Like the animated movie wasn't made by hard working artists but magical fairies in a Disney factory. Because everyone knows every animated movie ever made came from Disney. Everyone knows these animated movies aren't made by real directors anyway. Because if that was the case Hayao Miyazaki would of gotten a nomination in his 20 plus career for Best Director. Or maybe Brad Bird. Or Pete Docter or Genndy Tartakovsky for Hotel Transylvania. Okay maybe not the latter but still. It's the tarnished Best Animated Feature that collects all the hard work of 100s of people and shoves it into one award that gets shoved off the stage when that 10 second speech by a 40 year old introvert goes 1 second over the allowed time. Just think about it. No director of an animated movie has ever been nominated for Best Director. Live action has tons of awards for their work, but the story artists, the animators, the VFX work they do. Nothing. Nothing at all. No sound design,  no sound mixing, no editing. Nada. Animation isn't even a genre. And that's the root of the problem. The academy doesn't understand animation. And how can you respect something if you don't understand it?

The Best Animated Feature category is flawed. And insulting. The category name in itself already shows a fundamentally wrong understanding of the art form. It implies animation is a genre, but it's not. Even the fact that the Academy believes animation is a genre and doesn't have a separate category for Horror or Comedy or Sci-Fi or Adventure is clear evidence they think of animation as a lower art form that needs some sort of handicap to compete. Some people might say "But they do this because if that category never existed, animated movies would never get nominated! Sure it isn't a genre but it's helping them!" I don't see anyone helping out superhero movies, or popcorn movies or religious movies.  Get Out might need help. Logan might need help. So let's create categories for them too! But they don't. So if you don't do it to help Logan, why do it for Zootopia? Because people don't respect Zootopia enough to keep it on the same playing field as a comic book flick. Because it's got flurry cartoons on screen instead of a dude with claws on his fist.

Back in the day AMPAS were worried there weren't enough animated films to compete in the race so they handed out "special oscars" to acknowledge the movies. One that comes to mind is Walt Disney winning for Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs. It was a way to recognize these films when there wasn't a booming industry. It wasn't until 2001 when competition for Disney was ramping up that the AMPAS had to scramble to make a new category. But fast forward decades later since those special oscars and the same mindset is still in place. As Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi puts very bluntly,

For the last few years, The Hollywood Reporter has interviewed members of the Academy anonymously to find out how they voted in various categories. Each year (see 2014 or 2015), the “Brutally Honest Oscar Voter Ballot” participants have shown a dismissive attitude toward animation, but more than mere attitude, they’ve also shown themselves uniquely unqualified to judge animated filmmaking, often expressing contempt for the art form and viewing it as a lesser craft than what they produce in live action.

Such views echo the stories that I have personally heard from reliable sources about how some Academy members outsource the animated feature voting process to their children, allowing their kids to watch the nominated films and report back with their favorites. 

Amid also points out that "Disney's Zootopia won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, marking the NINTH TIME in TEN YEARS that the Walt Disney Company has won the award." When in doubt bet on Disney. I'm not an animator but the amount of disrespect the animation industry gets is astonishing. But what can they really do? The most powerful house in animation won't lift a finger to change things because almost every year they receive the award. Little animation houses can't sway support and it's an endless cycle that goes on and on.  And you can't teach these Academy members about animation because it's been drilled into their mind these movies are for kids. But there is a difference between a "kids movie" and a "family movie." The Oogieloves is a kids movie directed at JUST KIDS. The Incredibles is a "family movie" meaning everyone in the family can watch and enjoy regardless of age. Two vastly different things. The decades of stigmatism against cartoon movies will never change unless maybe the animation industry takes more risks with features. But that's another article in itself and not the main problem.

The bottom line is if you don't understand something, how can you respect it? And you if don't respect something why would you want to learn more about it?

So what should replace Best Animated feature? As someone who understands the mechanics of animation,  I believe there should be a Best Animated Scene to honor animators. Animators are actors too. Just like Meryl Streep or Tom Hanks they work for weeks on characters trying to express emotions to the audience. Their main job is to bring that character on script to life. Shouldn't we treat them as equals? Then let the film stand on its own within other categories. Why can't the production designer of The Lorax get a nomination for Production Design? Yarrow Cheney worked just as hard as Arthur Max did on The Martian. We honor cinematographers for their work, editors, costume designers for live action, why not extend that same curiosity to the animation community? Open the flood gates of creativity regardless of stupid guilds. But even as I type this, the cogs of the Academy are shifting in the wrong direction.

A few months ago we learned the rules of Best Animated Feature has changed. As Slashfilm points out, 

Any interested member of the Academy can join the nominating committee for animated features, as opposed to the current committee, which is made up of members from the animation branch as well as “other branches with a connection to animation.”

Opening the committee to any interested parties may seem like a fine idea – if a voter likes animation, where’s the harm? The problem is that more mainstream voters may lead to more mainstream nominations. The larger problem is simple: the Best Animated Feature Oscar helps continue to set a frustrating precedent in the industry.

So we can expect Captain Underpants to get a nom next year. Fantastic. And lovely movies that go under the radar like The Red Turtle will be left in the dark. The beauty of Oscars is that it sheds a light on movies the general audience doesn't necessary know about. Films like La La Land and Moonlight have gotten major bumps in the box office from their wins. And with these new rules in place it further deepens the divide between the animation community and the Oscars. A divide that will probably last forever until Academy members realize a film is a film, whether its been shot with an IMAX camera by Bradford Young or rendered on a computer by a Dreamworks employee.

And that animation isn't a genre! But I'll let the very talented Brad Bird get that one:

“People think of animation only doing things where people are dancing around and doing a lot of histrionics, but animation is not a genre. And people keep saying, ‘The animation genre.’ It’s not a genre! A Western is a genre! Animation is an art form, and it can do any genre. You know, it can do a detective film, a cowboy film, a horror film, an R-rated film or a kids’ fairy tale. But it doesn’t do one thing. And, next time I hear, ‘What’s it like working in the animation genre?’ I’m going to punch that person!”

Nice.