The Oscar nominations came out Thursday morn and, of course, with nominees come non-nominees. Most of the news stories yesterday seemed to focus not on who was nominated but who wasn't.
That's better fodder for the cable talk shows and scandal sites, of course, but it's also kind of silly. I was going to write a post on how absurd it was to say someone had been "snubbed" but then I saw that my friend Steve Stoliar had posted the following on Facebook. So here, with his permission…
If the members of the MP Academy got together and, amongst themselves, said, "Who don't we want to be nominated?" and then discussed it in a big room and then decided — in unison — who to keep out of the nominations — especially for some petty reason — that is a snub. But when each member marks a ballot in secrecy, based on his/her opinion — informed, intelligent, or otherwise — of who deserves a vote — always a subjective thing; there's no such thing as a film, actor, song, book, painting that everybody loves or everybody hates — that is not a snub. It is — wait for it — democracy in action, like it or not.
When there are more Best Picture nominees allowed than for any other category, it is statistically impossible to have each Best Picture director also nominated in the Best Director category. The lack of inclusion does not mean that director did a shitty job or "the movie must've directed itself" (that tired, meaningless cliché), or that the Academy conspired to keep their names off the list. It means the others got more votes than they did, so they didn't make the cut. You can rail about not enough women, not enough blacks, not enough black women, etc. etc. etc. and you can see it as some shameful snubbing conspiracy that must stop this very minute, but that is the simple truth. Whether you choose to extrapolate something more sinister from it is your choice.
One other point and this is M.E. again: Marion Cotillard got a nomination for Best Actress. Jennifer Aniston didn't and they're saying she was "snubbed." But we don't know the vote totals. Maybe Cotillard got one more vote than Aniston. Maybe Aniston missed the cut-off by one vote. That wouldn't be much of a snub, would it?
*If you don't know who Snub Pollard was, here's who he was.