Just like last year, there's a lot of Oscar-nominated animation in 2011. And, like last year, an animated film has been nominated for Best Picture, outside of the Best Animated Feature category. And this is as it should be. Especially since the same film was the highest grossing film of 2010 and doesn’t money talk in Hollywood? Maybe next year, two animated films will be nominated in the Best Picture category.
Doesn’t that tell you something, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Animation doesn’t really need a separate category. It never did. The only reason one was created in 2001, was because live actors were outraged in 1991, when they found themselves competing with cartoons after Beauty and the Beast became the first ever animated film nominated in the category.
But I haven’t heard many actors bitching about competing with a cartoon lately. Many of the A-list actors nominated for Best Actor/Best Supporting Actor Oscars have done highly-paid voice-overs for animated films and are as beloved for their live roles as for their animated characters.
But I haven’t heard many actors bitching about competing with a cartoon lately. Many of the A-list actors nominated for Best Actor/Best Supporting Actor Oscars have done highly-paid voice-overs for animated films and are as beloved for their live roles as for their animated characters.
Having a separate category for animation diminishes it and relegates it to a “not-quite-as-good-as the-real-thing” category. There’s no reason why animation should be considered the exclusive medium of children’s films, therefore not to be taken seriously. This condescension seems to come from a time when animation was so primitive that it could do little more than make us smile with its silliness, not necessarily a bad thing. But, times have changed. Today’s animation is a very sophisticated art, involving not only highly educated and talented writers, artists and designers but even physicists who make the tools the animators use to make magic (light models, virtual clothes).
Audiences don’t identify with animated characters any less than live actors these days, either. They care just as much about Andy and his toys, Hiccup and Toothless as they do about Colin Firth and Natalie Portman.
And let’s not forget that animation has invaded live-action film to an astonishing degree. There are few, if any live-action films untouched by CGI in one way or another today. From merely digitally removing the nose hairs of a star, to the explosions and crashes and mind-boggling landscapes of Inception, CGI is everywhere in “real” films.
So, members of the Academy, why have a separate category for animation? Really, it’s just plain silly. Animation and live-action have a symbiotic existence now, they’re inextricably linked. Let’s just have one Best Picture category and may they best pixel, er, picture win.
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