Academy Awards - Highbrow Culture Awards?

The months of January and February are usually known as award season in Hollywood, due to the numerous film awards that take place. It starts off with certain critic awards such as the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards or the Chicago Film Critics Association. Then perhaps the most acclaimed critics awards the Golden Globes, hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press. These awards are decided upon by critics, who tend to fall under the lowbrow culture. These awards are followed by more presitigious awards such as the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards or Directors Guild of America followed by the most prestigious film awards The Academy Awards (The Oscars). These awards are voted by industry professionals such as very successful directors, actors, producers, in essence people into highbrow culture.

The winners of the various guild awards are usually great indications as to who will win the Oscars, since the members tend to overlap. Interestingly, the highbrow tastes of the members of the Academy is very evident by looking at the various Oscar winners. The year of 2009, Avatar was the most successful and critically acclaimed movie of the year. The movie won best picture in various critic awards such as New York Film Critics Online, the Critics Choice Award and The People's Choice Awards. However, it lost the Academy Awards to a much more highbrow film, The Hurt Locker, critics and people called it a huge upset. Avatar was a fantasy film revolving around aliens and magical creatures, not exactly highbrow culture, meanwhile The Hurt Locker, revolved around the struggle soldiers, mainly bomb defusers, face in Iraq, much more highbrow. In the past the last, and only, fantasy film to win the Best Picture Awards was The Lord of the Rings - Return of the King in 2003 and even that was sort of highbrow culture since it was adapted from a book.

Most recently, The Social Network , in my opinion best movie of the year, lost to The King's Speech, which was a very good movie however not as good as The Social Network, it was much

more suited for highbrow culture than the Social Network. The Social Network won most critic awards as well as the Golden Globes, during all of January and half of February it was the clear frontrunner. It was almost a sure thing. Then, the Guild Awards rolled in, with every guild award it seemed The King's Speech was gaining support and The Social Network was losing it. The Social Network wasn't Highbrow enough.

Therefore, once again highbrow culture seems to get more recognition then lowbrow with little regard to quality and more to taste.