This year we have a good squad of animation movies nominated for the Oscars, but once again Japanese animated films have been left out of the nominees list despite it being a very strong year for anime. As if that were not enough, three of the five nominees are Disney titles and it seems that the award is practically delivered for another year, which shows the big problem that the Academy has with animated films.
A bit of history and tintintin
The category of animation oscar It is one that does not stop giving us something to talk about, and look that it is a relatively recent one. And it is that until 2001, there was no category dedicated solely to celebrating animated films, not necessarily because the medium was not appreciated, but because we lived in the 90s of the last century a veritable explosion of animation studios.
The nomination for Best Picture for ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was an awakening for many studios, who suddenly saw the very distant dream of taking home the Oscar closer than it seemed until then. In that decade many more things happened, of course, but between the birth of DreamWorks and the arrival of several great animated films, Disney suddenly had competitors at its level and every year several powerful releases arrived in theaters.
So the category for Best animated film did not take long (because we didn’t want to risk a “cartoon movie” taking the Oscar for Best Picture, but that’s another melon for another day), and in 2001 ‘Shrek’ made history as the first winning film in this field.
Since then the category has presented quite varied competitors, and although there have been very fat and notable exceptions, unfortunately more and more it has become the disney and pixar show default.
What an eye, this does not mean that neither the films of these studios nor the teams behind them do not deserve this recognition. But it does highlight the great problem of the members of the Academy when valuing animated films…many of which they don’t even bother to look at.
Almost every couple of years a big controversy arises again because the academics themselves admit that they have not bothered to see all the nominated films, that they are not even interested in this type of cinema, and that many times they have voted for the Disney candidate or Pixar because it’s the studio you already know. So effectively, for many years the Oscar for Best Animated Feature has gone to the House of Mouse by default without too many headaches.
Of 21 editions that have been held so far, 14 of the statuettes have gone by default to a Disney that dominates the category without too much difficulty. So good, now it’s time to talk about the ugly of the Academy.
The ugly ones
I don’t know about you, but few things have given me serotonin with these awards like when ‘Spider-Man: A new universe’ won the Oscar over a Pixar movie and another Disney movie. Many fans of animation we saw a glimmer of hope that finally certain styles of animation were breaking through and that other studios might have more of a chance at these awards.
Then the next edition came along and everything was taken from me in one fell swoop. In what I continue to describe as “the robbery of the century”, The 2020 Oscars presented us with a very interesting competition and what would have been a perfect opportunity to recognize the merit of smaller studios. We had ‘Missing Link’, a new bet on LAIKA’s stop-motion, the intimate French story ‘I lost my body’, and the wonderful and essential ‘Klaus’ measuring up with two sequels from Pixar and DreamWorks.
After the trajectory of festivals that it had, many of us already gave the award to Sergio Pablos’ film as given. But either because he went over the rest of the studies again or to punish Netflix, the academics decided to go over ‘Klaus’ with a triple somersault and give the award to ‘Toy Story 4’.
This would not sit so badly if it weren’t for the fact that it is a trend that we are seeing more and more, and especially compared to the first years in which the category existed, where the list of winners and even nominees was much more varied.
Years ago another big controversy jumped over the disdain of the Oscars towards anime films. And it is that despite the authentic masterpieces that have come out of Japan in the last 20 years, only ‘Spirited Away’ can boast of having won the animation Oscar. Not only that, but many anime movies don’t even get to smell the nomination, no matter how huge their box office or cultural impactand if not, there is nothing more to look at as ‘Your name’ did not even seem to exist for the American Academy.
Studio Ghibli movies are usually the exception because they are lucky enough to have a name in capital letters behind their backs, but we have seen how authentic phenomena with incredible animation like ‘Promare‘ and now ‘[Belle]
(https://www.espinof.com/festival-cannes/cannes-2021-hosoda-nos-lleva-belle-a-asombroso-mundo-virtual-sangsoo-propone-conversaciones-copas-in-front-of-your -face)’ are not even considered, but instead the category is populated with Disney entries.
This year we have an interesting case and again a bit bleak, with ‘Charming’, ‘Luca’ and ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ representing Disney. On the other side, the animated documentary ‘Flee’ and ‘The Mitchells against the machines’, one of the most powerful titles of sony animation.
We have more than half of the candidates covered by the same conglomerate (eye, knowing that yes, Disney Animation and Pixar are different studios, but in the end they belong to the same house), while other very strong bets have been left out . Back to ‘belle‘, the Mamoru Hosoda film has its problems, yes, but it brilliantly combines various animation techniques at a very high level and results in an exciting and beautiful film… that hasn’t even been nominated.
In an award that seeks to celebrate animation, if the world were fair we would not be suffering to see if ‘The Mitchells against the machines’ can finally take it or not. Because it’s a hilarious, heart-pumping movie that uses a lot of different mediums and rewrites the norms of what we see in animation effortlessly and in a brilliant and very natural way.
Or look, we might as well be talking about ‘Flee’how important his story is and the reality he tells us, and how shows that animation is only a storytelling medium and not a genreso we can make documentaries or any kind of film we want.
But instead… Well, I’m going to see what I find the feeling that the Oscar for Best Animated Film is already practically delivered to ‘Encanto’. Because yes, the animation is amazing and the songs get into your head for a month… But it seems that we don’t see beyond that.
And if not, then luckily we have the Annies.