Why the Oscars Don’t Understand Animation
Frozen won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, which pretty much confirmed what I already knew—the Academy doesn’t actually know anything about animation. The Hollywood Reporter got interviews with seven jury members, and reading them was like watching someone confidently describe a painting they’d never actually looked at.
These people had never heard of Hayao Miyazaki. The Wind Rises, which was essentially Miyazaki’s goodbye to filmmaking, registered as nothing to them. Ernest & Celestine didn’t exist. They’d seen Despicable Me 2, sure—everyone knows the big Disney hit. But the films that actually mattered to anyone who cares about animation as a form? Never registered.
Here’s the thing: Frozen is fine. It’s competent, it does what it sets out to do, it’s a perfectly solid Disney movie. But the jury didn’t vote for it as the year’s best animated film. They voted for it because it was the most animated in the only way they understand animation—something bright and cheerful and made for kids. The idea that animation could be something else, that it could have its own visual language and philosophical depth, that someone like Miyazaki could make something profound out of it—that wasn’t even in their field of vision.
This is what gets to me about award shows. They wrap themselves in authority, but they can’t manage basic literacy in the forms they’re judging. When animation shows up, they see cartoons. When they see a Japanese master, they see nothing. They don’t know the name, don’t know the work, can’t imagine why anyone would care.
The whole thing felt quaint even then, like watching someone insist they’re a serious music critic while only knowing what the radio plays. I didn’t expect better. I just wish I’d cared less about the verdict.