Oscars 2023: Anonymous Ballots Are Weird and Gross

The whole trend started with Scott Feinberg’s kind of funny Brutally Honest Oscar Ballots at the Hollywood Reporter wherein members talk about how they felt about movies and their reactions become content for the churn. Now, though, so many new sites have gotten into the game, from Next Best Picture to Indiewire. Why? Well, clicks of course. Traffic.

Depending on what films they complain about, they will either be celebrated, mocked or condemned.  These voters are used as a proxy to prove or disprove a Twitter narrative, like Top Gun Maverick was bad or Cate Blanchett is not a good actress. They used to be more about making fun of out-of-touch Academy voters. I imagine if many of these ballots were complaining about the current frontrunner, Everything, Everywhere All At Once there would waves of outrage on Twitter.

What is sad about it, and probably explains why they’re multiplying, is that so few journalists or even Academy members feel comfortable being honest with how they feel about anything. They are worried they will be attacked. And they have cause to worry because people are vicious online. They’re creepy, punitive, judgmental bullies who don’t think twice about throwing people under the bus.

Look at this tweet about Erick Weber who is talking about Everything, Everywhere winning Best Picture. The comments underneath Max from Quebec’s tweet are as mean as you can imagine, even though Erick is being mostly tongue-in-cheek here and giving a strong opinion, something the majority of Film Twitter users are too afraid to do.

306 “hearts” on this is, well, sad. But it does show you how if you don’t go along with the groupthink online you become a target, which is what Academy members usually are.

https://twitter.com/MaxFromQuebec/status/1633514581925429248

But I wonder about these Chatty Cathys so eager to talk to bloggers and spill their guts. Is it just that they have power and it feels good to be a “special” one for five minute? To quote The King of Comedy, better King for a Day than Schmuck for a Lifetime?

There are too many of them and they aren’t even funny by now, I promise you. Anyone posting them who isn’t Scott Feinberg looks like a copycat. They were only good and interesting when he dropped them because he made sure every release was suspenseful. But those days are gone. It has become fully saturated.

I know the competition for eyeballs is fierce and that the Oscars aren’t that exciting this year in terms of predictions but I don’t know. The whole thing seems like a weird trend that took on a life of its own.

The ones I find useful are just ballots revealed, like Clayton Davis has done here. He isn’t the business of embarrassing anyone but is simply offering some analysis on what his take on these ballots are. 

There are some interesting insights here but then you get hit with something like this and you feel like you’re in a scene from TAR:

It is, of course, dangerous to get sucked into them because you can convince yourself they mean SOMETHING. They don’t. There are thousands of people who vote on the Oscars.

I’ve been doing this job a long time and I tell you beyond any doubt that no good comes from these ultimately. None of the Academy members, despite their best efforts, come off sounding smart or even competent. You really don’t want to know what most of them think. And it isn’t that they are “too old” in many cases. “Too young” turns out to be a problem too when you have to read zingers like, “Banshees was fine…. you know how, like, there are movies for dads? It’s a dad movie, and it’s a good one. It just didn’t land for me.” Shut up. Take a seat. Learn something.

For those on the fence about Cate Blanchett vs. Michelle Yeoh (I go back and forth myself), you do see a lot of this kind of thing, “but to see what Michelle, a woman who’s so overdue, did in her movie, with the action and the fighting and the emotion? I had to pick Michelle. Tie goes to the person who hasn’t won over the person who already has two.”

Maybe it means something. Maybe it doesn’t. But I’m always slightly suspicious of people who WANT to reveal their choices publicly/anonymously. They are in their own group when it comes to analyzing their tastes and motives.