Recently the Academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, aka the Oscar folks) announced a few updates to their awards and broadcast. They seem to have been listening to the viewing audience with one of these changes – there will now be an Oscar category for popular films. So this is a good thing, right? Maybe not when you take a moment to think about it. 

Now we all know that, in the wider scheme of things, the Oscars don’t matter at all. It’s a pat-on-the-back award for people in the film industry. It is, however, the biggest mainstream award that entertainers can achieve. (There’s a reason, after all, that so many other awards are dubbed the Oscars of their particular industry.) Plus, a lot of movie-goers love finding out if their favorite films made the cut or get recommendations for what to catch when it hits the small screen.

We also know that the Oscars cater to the artsy, the dramatic – basically, the entertainment snobs. The movies that get the big prizes are the “critical darlings”, even if the majority of movie goers have never heard of them. And that’s where a popular film category comes in. The Academy wants more people to care about the Oscars, so what better way than to include blockbusters in their very own category.

And that’s where the problem comes in. They have created a category exclusively for the most popular of films so they don’t need to make the effort to acknowledge that any of these films could match the quality and depth of the critically acclaimed films permitted in the Best Picture or Best Actor/Actress or Best Original Screenplay categories. It’s saying “hey, that’s a great movie, just not good enough for a real award because… you know… it’s popular”. The addition of this category is an insult to those of us who love popular films and recognize that there are some that are truly excellent (Black Panther and Wonder Woman, as recent examples).

It’s not a surprise that one of the largest organizations in the entertainment industry would pander to the crowd just to get a little more attention (and money). But it’s not going to get me to watch the three-hour broadcast or care about the “real” movies any more than I do now (which isn’t much). It will be nice to see a geek flick get a little cred and maybe open some eyes, but segregation is still segregation – and accommodation is far from inclusion.