The Decline and Fall of the Academy
The Academy was once the pinnacle of cinematic prestige but somewhere between the politics and the snubs, something shifted. VAGUE Resident Sara Fares Vovko asks whether Hollywood’s biggest night has finally lost the plot.
The Oscars are one of the most broadcasted and watched events globally, and the Academy that awards them is one of the most respected institutions when it comes to film critique and discussion. The very same Academy that, just last year, had a disappointing amount of members publicly discussing the fact that they hadn’t watched all the nominees and confessing to voting for people based on previous awards (or a lack thereof) and films they’d found other members voting for. The very same Academy that, later the same year, refused to state the name of one of its very own winners, Hamdan Ballal, after he was kidnapped and severely beaten by Israeli settlers, and only returned home after a global outcry for justice.
It seems that the Academy has abandoned the very principle of what it’s supposed to represent: a love and appreciation for good film. If Academy voters were regular people in run-of-the-mill jobs, they would be fired three times over for the manner in which the 2025 Oscars took place. Not only was the job not done, but the individuals tasked with it openly admitted to not doing it. The very premise of the Academy seems to have evaporated into thin air, leaving its awards as more of a lottery of what its members have bothered to watch than an actual acknowledgement of artistry and good work within the film industry.
Yet somehow, film lovers continue to tune in, even if they are disappointed with deserving films not receiving nominations, or not getting the right nominations, and there are weeks of lengthy discussions about films that didn't deserve nominations but received them anyway. There is often shock and frustration, sometimes satisfaction, sometimes, “Well okay, I guess that makes sense,” and other times, “Well okay, I don’t think that makes sense but I kind of saw it coming”. Mostly, people tend to be frustrated — that’s to say, people who have seen all the films nominated, and who place more importance on how good they were than the production companies or award campaigns behind them.
“If Academy voters were regular people in run-of-the-mill jobs, they would be fired three times over for the manner in which the 2025 Oscars took place.”
It is a simple fact that the Academy is nowhere near what it used to be, or was intended to be — the kids aren’t even doing their homework. It took 97 years of its existence and the terrifying prospect of Emilia Pérez winning best picture for a rule about watching all nominated films to be implemented — one that should have been a prerequisite since day 1.
However, watching the nominated films doesn’t account for the biases that become apparent throughout the nomination process. It is becoming more and more common for films that seem like sure nominees for various categories to be left out completely due to trivial things such as smaller campaigns and recency bias. As years go on, it becomes clearer that the Academy is becoming less about quality and the art behind the films being celebrated and more about pandering to specific criteria that seem to be coming from a marketing oriented place rather than one with any semblance of love for film.
Despite viewership of the Academy Awards remaining high, the frustration becomes more and more apparent each year. The 2025 Awards seemed to have left a bitter taste in pretty much everyone’s mouth for multiple reasons — from snubs of deserving films to cowardly statements regarding the brutal treatment of the Palestinian documentary feature winner mere weeks after the ceremony. The organisation that was meant to uplift and celebrate the art of filmmaking has turned into pandering to a very specific group of people which, unfortunately, has little to nothing to do with appreciating the art form of film.
The 2026 Awards are swiftly approaching, and already many of the nominations and snubs have produced a ripple effect of criticism among film lovers. While members of the Academy have been silent on avoiding doing their jobs, and Sinners has rightfully set a new record with 16 nominations — a somewhat unexpected development considering the Academy’s disdain for horror, as phenomenal as it may be — there is still much to critique about who has, and hasn’t, made the cut to be nominated.
Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby isn’t even been considered for best original screenplay. Park Chan-Wook’s No Other Choice garnered no nominations, not even in the international feature category, probably out of a fear of the Parasite phenomenon happening all over again because how could a film that’s not in English possibly be worthy of a Best Picture win (a second time, anyway). Instead, this year sees another Best Picture nomination of a film that’s more than worthy and yet stands no chance at winning due to not being in English. Instead, we see a nomination for The Secret Agent, reminiscent in origin of last year’s Best Picture nomination for I’m Still Here. Are these films worthy of being in that spot? Absolutely. Do they stand a chance at winning? In an alternate universe where the global, English speaking West isn’t perceived as the world’s center, perhaps.
At this point, the “foreign” language films introduced to the Best Picture category are there for courtesy’s sake; not because they aren’t deserving of a win, but because we’ve seen Academy members openly admitting to not watching the English-speaking films. What makes us think that they’re willing to “overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles,” as put by Bong Joon-Ho when he won the Best Picture Oscar for Parasite in 2020, being the first and (so far) only non-English language film to do so. It’s almost like Parasite’s win instilled a fear of epic proportions in the Western film scene by not only implying, but confirming, that a foreign film can prevail in such a race.
“...we’ve seen Academy members openly admitting to not watching the English-speaking films.”
Aside from the clear lack of a genuine global perspective, this year’s nominations have also (once again) underlined issues within the organisation that have been present for as long as it has been around. Chloé Zhao is only the second woman to be nominated for best director twice, placed in the category alongside male directors who have racked up anywhere between 3 (Joachim Trier) and 14 (Paul Thomas Anderson) nominations for their work, as well as Ryan Coogler, whose win this year would make him the first Black director to ever win the Oscar — in 2026, the 98th year of the Academy Awards.
The Best Actress category is, once again, overwhelmingly white, eliminating any hope of a third woman of colour winning the award this year and continuing a long-lasting streak of white winners that has only been broken by Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball, 2001) and Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once, 2022). Again, at the 98th year of the Academy Awards.
Arguably, the Academy’s morals never existed in the first place. As we approach a full century of the annual ceremony, there isn’t much to look back on that doesn’t raise an eyebrow in a society that makes us far more conscious of gender and race inequalities than we once were, as well as the nuances that come with them. However, along with the already malfunctioning moral compass of the academy, we are now seeing the very point of its creation gradually crumbling down as years go by. This raises question of how long the Academy will keep its status or its already fading legitimacy is becoming impossible to ignore or shove aside. One way or another, it will have to make big changes to the way it works, or it will slowly disintegrate before our very eyes and perhaps that would be for the better.
credits
words — sara fares zovko
design — gloria ukoh