Over the past few years a trend has started involving movie award shows where they predominately give out nominations and awards to whatever movie/show fits their political agenda regardless of the competition. Of course the Oscars and Golden Globes have not always been perfect when it comes to nominations, but it has become pretty transparent over the past year. They have been incredibly inconsistent with who they hand out their awards to and the reasoning behind them.

A prime example of this is Black Panther being nominated for best picture. Black Panther is a movie about a king of an imaginary third world country called Wakanda and his alternate life as a superhero. This is the first superhero movie to ever be nominated for best picture, and the only big nomination a superhero movie has gotten aside from Heath Ledger’s win of best supporting actor for his amazing performance as the Joker in the Dark Knight.

Now don’t get me wrong, Black Panther was an awesome movie and its cultural impact was undeniable, but for it to be the first best picture nomination for a superhero movie is crazy. There have been much better superhero movies that have been put out over the last decade.

For instance, the aforementioned Dark Knight is widely regarded as the best superhero movie ever and wasn’t taken seriously by the academy, and it could even be argued that Black Panther wasn’t even the best superhero movie this year with ensemble spectacle that was Avengers: Infinity War coming out just two months after.

My main gripe with the nomination is that I don’t believe that the movie would have got nominated had it not been for the cultural impact it had on the African American community. I don’t believe that is the proper criteria to look at when it comes to judging movies, especially when there were better movies this year that documented the struggles of African Americans that didn’t get nominated like If Beale Street Could Talk.

The next instance of award shows doing this comes with BlacKkKlansman being nominated for a multitude of awards.

BlacKkKlansman tells the story of an African American cop infiltrating the Klu Klux Klan in the 1970’s directed by Spike Lee. Now with any Spike Lee movie it was different, the setting and the feel were great for a 70’s crime drama, but it was lacking in major areas like the plot.

The movie was nominated for best picture and director at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes which I can respect for the fact that the movie did enough things well enough for it to be in the conversation. Where my problem arises is the over nominations it got in other categories like best actor and best supporting actor because I just don’t think the performances were good enough.

I think the over nomination stems from the subject matter of the movie with the Klu Klux Klan and the civil rights movement rather than how good the film really is. I think this a big problem with these award shows and I don’t have a problem with the messages these movies are trying to convey, my problem is with the people who pick these movies because I believe they do it for the wrong reasons.

The biggest example of the award shows getting it wrong is last year when Jordan Peele’s Get Out was nominated for best picture. Get Out was an amazing movie about systematic racism in our country and how detrimental it can be, and I believe it should’ve won best picture last year. If the award shows really wanted to make a statement about this kind of stuff they would’ve given the award to Get Out.

Instead they chose the path that they always take which is nominating these movies just to keep people happy no matter how good or bad they are, and never giving the awards to the ones trying to make a change that deserve it. With all that being said I don’t want to come off as being racist or anything like that because there are plenty of good films that highlight the injustices I’ve previously talked about, but I just think the Academy chooses to highlight the wrong ones.