Maxance Vincent
Andrea Riseborough‘s Oscar nomination for To Leslie came as a bit of a shock for Oscar pundits and film journalists covering Awards season. A few weeks before the nominations were announced, many actors started talking about her performance in Michael Morris‘ To Leslie, and led a grassroots campaign to get her nominated. When Cate Blanchett won a Critics Choice Award earlier this month, she mentioned Riseborough as one of the actresses who deserved an award more than her.
Many questions swirled around the legitimacy of her nomination, as some stars wrote the same material on social media to campaign for her to get an Oscar. However, the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences CEO Bill Kramer stated that “Based on concerns that surfaced last week around the TO LESLIE awards campaign, the Academy began a review into the film’s campaigning tactics. The Academy has determined the activity in question does not rise to the level that the film’s nomination should be rescinded. However, we did discover social media and outreach campaigning tactics that caused concern. These tactics are being addressed with the responsible parties directly.
The purpose of the Academy’s campaign regulations is to ensure a fair and ethical awards process—these are core values of the Academy. Given this review, it is apparent that components of the regulations must be clarified to help create a better framework for respectful, inclusive, and unbiased campaigning. These changes will be made after this awards cycle and will be shared with our membership. The Academy strives to create an environment where votes are based solely on the artistic and technical merits of the eligible films and achievements.”
Even if there were some dubious tactics involved in nominating the film, it hasn’t risen above the levels to rescind its nominations. That’s an interesting statement, but it seems that rules for grassroots campaigning will be changing after Riseborough’s nomination surprised virtually everyone, including The Academy themselves.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
This is the only response I can think of that carries the lowest risk of negative long-term consequences.
If Andrea Riseborough‘s nomination had been rescinded, it would set a grim precedent where any violation of campaigning rules – even ones without the participation of the nominee – would be disqualifying, which would incentivize less… shall we say, “sportsmanlike” studios to meticulously look for even the slightest discrepancy from their competitors and eliminate them by attrition. If Harvey Weinstein weren’t rotting away in the Wende Correctional Facility right now, he absolutely would have taken full advantage of this.
But if no action of any kind is taken against the celebrities who, at a minimum, behaved inappropriately and against the “spirit” of these competitions, it would set a different kind of bad precedent where the scales of who gets nominated are tilted even more heavily than they are right now in favor of how many of a prospective nominee’s friends are willing to directly appeal to Academy voters on their behalf.
Largely agreed.