When did musicals become Oscar bait?
The musical genre is a bit like Warhammer. People who are into it are die-hard fans, while many of the people who aren’t simply do not understand what all the fuss is about. That is the only explanation for how a film like Emilia Pérez could top the charts of this year’s Oscar nominations with 13. Some people loved it; others were so perplexed and put off by it that the whole thing felt like some kind of hoax. Although less divisive, Wicked was also singled out by the Academy, earning 10 nominations.
When you look at the past 20 years of Academy Awards ceremonies, there has been a marked increase in the number of musicals that have gotten showered with nominations. Sure, Chicago was the last in the genre to win ‘Best Picture’ in 2002, but it was more of an anomaly than a trend. Between 2005 and 2015, only one musical was nominated for the top prize, Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables, in 2013. In contrast, seven ‘Best Picture’ nominees in the past decade have been musicals.
So, why is this happening? When did this razzle-dazzle marmite of a genre become Oscar bait? The Academy has gone through many transformations over the past couple of decades, and the surging respect for musicals turned out to be one of the most prominent knock-on effects.
It’s important to note that musicals used to be Oscar shoe-ins. In the 1950s and ’60s, no fewer than six of them won ‘Best Picture,’ while three others won in each of the three decades before that. Dozens of others were nominated. When the Golden Age of Hollywood crumbled, directors like Martin Scorsese and William Friedkin took over and revolutionised the film industry with gritty realism.
Even the New Hollywood directors who did try their hand at musicals were roundly slapped down. Think of Scorsese’s New York, New York, or Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart and The Cotton Club. With a few exceptions, including 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof and 1978’s Grease, the genre was generally considered to be a bit embarrassing or, at the very least, the domain of children’s movies.
The early 2000s saw a boom in the genre, with movies like Moulin Rouge!, Dreamgirls, and Across the Universe offering a much more modern and diverse direction that filmmakers could take. It wasn’t until recently, however, that that trend has translated into major Oscar nominations. Musicals tend to do pretty well in categories like ‘Original Song,’ ‘Production Design,’ and ‘Costume Design,’ but nominations, let alone wins, in categories like ‘Best Director,’ ‘Best Picture,’ and acting have been more elusive.
One of the main reasons that has changed in the past decade has to do with the Academy changing its rules in 2009 regarding the number of films that can earn a coveted ‘Best Picture’ nomination. Where five nominees was the standard for decades, anywhere between five and ten became the norm throughout the 2010s, depending on how many films could reach a certain share of the votes. In 2021, the Academy changed the rules again, this time to make it a neat list of ten. Since then, four musicals have been nominated in the category.
Another potential reason for the rise of the genre is that the Academy has expanded its membership significantly in recent years due to multiple controversies, most notably the fact that the vast majority of voters were white. With a voting body that is more diverse in age, race, and nationality, the makeup of the ‘Best Picture’ category has changed significantly in the past decade, with a much stronger showing from international films and indies. Musicals, especially ones like Emilia Pérez, which is European, have probably benefited from this shift as well.
Ultimately, though, even as musicals have started to dominate the nominations list, they are not taking home many awards. This year, Emilia Pérez and Wicked received 23 nominations, but only went home with four awards. Only Zoe Saldaña’s win for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ was outside the design and music categories. Musicals have a major advantage when it comes to snapping up lots of nominations because they often have flashy production values and catchy songs. A little indie like Anora, in contrast, only earned six nominations but still walked away with almost every major award.
This brings us back to the fact that musicals are a divisive genre. Given the set number of ‘Best Picture’ nominees and the broad range in categories for which they can be nominated, it is likely that they will continue to be major players in the Oscar race. However, it’s been more than two decades since one of them won ‘Best Picture,’ and until that changes, they will only be ‘bait’ and nothing more.
