Books, Arts & Manners: A Modest Proposal

THE Academy Awards telecast has become the biggest extravaganza on the planet. This is good because it generates a lot of money to pay for the Academy’s valuable work. It’s bad because the forum has become more important than the function.

Sixty-five years ago, a bunch of filmmakers, including most of the people who had invented moving pictures, decided to give awards to those of their fellows they thought had done the best work that year. Thus the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The Academy had little weight in the real world then; film had not yet been identified as the art form of the twentieth century, or the American art form. Everybody went to the movies, mind you: by 1928, American films were drawing a hundred million ticket buyers a week. (Today, with twice the population, the number of tickets sold is much smaller.)

CH

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Charlton Heston

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THE Academy Awards telecast has become the biggest extravaganza on the planet. This is good because it generates a lot of money to pay for the Academy’s valuable work. It’s bad because the forum has become more important than the function.

Sixty-five years ago, a bunch of filmmakers, including most of the people who had invented moving pictures, decided to give awards to those of their fellows they thought had done the best work that year. Thus the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The Academy had little weight in the real world then; film had not yet been identified as the art form of the twentieth century, or the American art form. Everybody went to the movies, mind you: by 1928, American films were drawing a hundred million ticket buyers a week. (Today, with twice the population, the number of tickets sold is much smaller.)