Why is Parasite nominated for best picture, when it's a foreign film?

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Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
I just thought it was interesting, how Parasite was nominated for best picture, and best foreign language picture, cause usually the Oscars only put foreign films in the best foreign language film category.

Is this the first time the Oscars have done this with a foreign language film? Is it a cheat to put it in both best picture categories?



Just last year Roma was nominated also - and should have won.

Green Book winning just underlined how behind the times the Academy is, by virtually revisiting and repeating when Driving Miss Daisy won.



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Foreign films have always been available for Best picture. As far back as 1971, with The Emigrants, and Cries and Whispers the next year. Some have even had best director nominations, without a best pic nomination to go with it. (See Fellini, Kurasawa, Bergman).
I don’t consider it a cheat to include them in both, as they are spectate categories.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Just last year Roma was nominated also - and should have won.

Green Book winning just underlined how behind the times the Academy is, by virtually revisiting and repeating when Driving Miss Daisy won.
But Green Book is a lot better than Driving Miss Daisy though, or at least I thought so.



I just thought it was interesting, how Parasite was nominated for best picture, and best foreign language picture, cause usually the Oscars only put foreign films in the best foreign language film category.

Is this the first time the Oscars have done this with a foreign language film? Is it a cheat to put it in both best picture categories?
Because otherwise they would have to call the category "Best picture in the English language'

The fact that there have only been around 9 non English language films ever nominated for 'best picture' in 92 years of the Oscars show how dreadfully xenophobic and racist the whole ceremony and organisation is.



But Green Book is a lot better than Driving Miss Daisy though, or at least I thought so.

That's not really the point though. IMO, neither film deserved the top prize, but that is not the point either. And both had tremendous acting performances by both of it's leads, but like so often strong central performances can colour people's opinions of the entire film as a whole. Just look at Joker this year, for instance.

What was my point, is that by recognizing Green Book last year and giving it the Best Picture honour is simply highlighting how the Academy has not really moved on in 30 years. In recent years #ocarssowhite & even #metoo have raised awareness over the lack of representation of minorities and the sexist attitudes in Hollywood, and have shed more light on the workings of the film industry, how it operates and even to an extent what it chooses to honour, for reasons other than what is actually the best film, irrespective of language.



mattiasflgrtll6's Avatar
The truth is in here
I mean, at its heart the Oscars is an American institution. While yes they could be more inclusive it makes sense why they don't put as much focus on foreign films. Most of the movies playing in theaters are English-language ones.
The fact that Roma and Parasite are best picture nominees so close to each other shows that they are slowly getting better at being more inclusive as well.

While the Oscars have plenty of problems, I think the racism is something people overblow nowadays. Don't forget how many categories Black Panther was nominated for as well, to the point where it channeled Bohemian Rhapsody.



The thing isolated becomes incomprehensible
Because otherwise they would have to call the category "Best picture in the English language'

The fact that there have only been around 9 non English language films ever nominated for 'best picture' in 92 years of the Oscars show how dreadfully xenophobic and racist the whole ceremony and organisation is.
I have a problem with this argument.

It's true that only a few foreign films get to be nominated for Best Picture, and that is indeed a problem but I don't believe it comes from a racist place. It's just the people who vote for this stuff are more used to watch American cinema, because the Academy is an American institution.
What they did in order to fight the entire #Oscarssowhite thing was to invite a broader variety of jury member, namely women and foreigners, and while that didn't made black people being nominated more (because, guess what?, the problem was not racism, at least on this level), it did create conditions for Parasite to be nominated.

Maybe in the future, the foreign film category could be eliminated if American and non-American films had the same shot at winning an Oscar but that is highly unlikely.



I have a problem with this argument.

It's true that only a few foreign films get to be nominated for Best Picture, and that is indeed a problem but I don't believe it comes from a racist place. It's just the people who vote for this stuff are more used to watch American cinema, because the Academy is an American institution.
What they did in order to fight the entire #Oscarssowhite thing was to invite a broader variety of jury member, namely women and foreigners, and while that didn't made black people being nominated more (because, guess what?, the problem was not racism, at least on this level), it did create conditions for Parasite to be nominated.

Maybe in the future, the foreign film category could be eliminated if American and non-American films had the same shot at winning an Oscar but that is highly unlikely.
The numbers unfortunately don't back up your argument. It's not just best film category either. It's almost every category.

The actors and actress categories almost never seem to have anybody other than the Hollywood elite in. Parasite is nominated a few times, yet none of the cast seem to be getting any mentions anywhere.

If,a s you say, it's because "people who vote for this stuff are more used to watch American cinema", then they really need to start calling this pathetic sharade "The American film awards".



If ,as you say, it's because "people who vote for this stuff are more used to watch American cinema", then they really need to start calling this pathetic [charade] "The American film awards".
The pathetic charade is not called the World Film Awards nor the American Film Awards. It is The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards, nicknamed The Oscars. The AMPAS began in Hollywood and remains rooted there. There's not a conspiracy. They are what they are.
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The pathetic charade is not called the World Film Awards nor the American Film Awards. It is The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards, nicknamed The Oscars. The AMPAS began in Hollywood and remains rooted there. There's not a conspiracy. They are what they are.
I don't disagree with any of that. It doesn't really have any relevance to the points being discussed though.



Tramuzgan's Avatar
Di je Karlo?
Just last year Roma was nominated also - and should have won.

Green Book winning just underlined how behind the times the Academy is, by virtually revisiting and repeating when Driving Miss Daisy won.
Agreed. The academy is scared of leaving its comfort zone, simple as that. Like the movie or not, Green Book is pure oscar bait.
There was The Artist back in 2011, and I don't know if the academy staff changed since then, but it shows that there's hope.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Because otherwise they would have to call the category "Best picture in the English language'

The fact that there have only been around 9 non English language films ever nominated for 'best picture' in 92 years of the Oscars show how dreadfully xenophobic and racist the whole ceremony and organisation is.
But I think every award ceremony for movies, in every country operates this way. Let's take the South Korean Blue Dragon Film Awards for example. Has there ever been a movie foreign to South Korea that was nominated for best picture?



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Agreed. The academy is scared of leaving its comfort zone, simple as that. Like the movie or not, Green Book is pure oscar bait.
There was The Artist back in 2011, and I don't know if the academy staff changed since then, but it shows that there's hope.
Well Green Zone may not have deserved best picture, but 2018 was such bad year movies from what I recall, that I didn't see anything better that year. So it was slimmer pickings perhaps? However, I haven't seen Vice yet, so maybe I might like that better.



The category exists to make sure lesser-known foreign language films get more attention, and it achieves that. When one of those films is particularly good it creates an edge case scenario where it supersedes the category. Not much more to it than that. Tolerating the occasional weirdness (where the sub-category is a foregone conclusion) probably makes more sense than having lots of little exceptions and sub-rules for the category. You get the same thing when an animated film is nominated for Best Picture. No big deal, the awards are (ostensibly) about recognition and not just creating drama.



I don't know the rules... But does it have American production? That might qualify it I guess. But googling doesn't show up anything of note. Or maybe it's so good they had to, which I can understand. Best of the year. Hands down!
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The fact that there have only been around 9 non English language films ever nominated for 'best picture' in 92 years of the Oscars show how dreadfully xenophobic and racist the whole ceremony and organisation is.
I think this is overstating things a tad, given that film quality, contra much simpler art forms, correlates highly with affluence. Even assuming a perfectly even distribution of talent and quality across the world, one would expect more great films from wealthier countries, and more than that, one would expect this to persist even as that gap narrowed, assuming we also believe that filmmaking experience correlates with quality.

That isn't to say the Academy hasn't overlooked lots of quality foreign films or does not have a bias towards English-language films, but I think there are lots of structural reasons some bias would exist even in a perfect (whatever that means when judging art) process.

I also think, even if somebody doesn't accept any of that, we'd probably be dealing more with implicit bias than out-and-out racism, though perhaps the latter term is a lot less charged in your usage than in mine.



Another consideration, which I think I've alluded to in other discussions: because there's more money to be made in English-speaking markets, lots of foreign directors with a great deal of talent end up making movies in English anyway. Those films might not be considered non-English, but in many cases the talent behind them is.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
That's true, the director of Parasite did Snowpiercer in English, and some movies coming out of Europe have been in English in the last few years.