So, Judd Apatow thinks there should be a separate Best Picture category at the Oscars for comedies -- which takes some balls, doesn't it, being a comedy producer and suggesting there should be a comedy Oscar? Aren't you just saying you think you deserve an Oscar? -- and he's certainly not the first person to suggest such a thing, but as much sense as his argument seems to make, there are still two sides to the actual issue he's raising: do comedies deserve more respect than they typically get during awards season? To answer that question, I'm reviving the old Point/Counterpoint feature from Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin's tenure on SNL's Weekend Update, so that both sides might have their chances to be heard.
Point: Comedies are usually among the most popular and talked-about movies of any given year, but when the Oscars -- ostensibly intended to honor the best in filmmaking, no matter what genre -- roll around, comedies are often overlooked in favor their more serious, dramatic brethren. Why? Well, mostly because the Academy likes to think of itself as a highbrow institution, and comedy is decidedly lowbrow, not to mention the assumption that actors are "doing more" when they play drama than when they play comedy, despite most actors insisting they find comedic roles more difficult than dramatic ones.
Counterpoint: Yes, comedies are usually among the most popular and talked-about movies of the year, but what about the decade? Or the century? What happens when people look back at a comedy from a vantage point of twenty-five years? The unfortunate truth about comedy is that it is much more ephemeral than drama; sad is sad, but what we find funny today might not seem funny to people fifty years from now; hell, what I find funny might not be funny to the person beside me in the theater. Movies should be judged in the context of their own times, but truly great movies should also be timeless, and the Academy undoubtedly wants to avoid awarding a movie like The Hangover only to have people ten years down the road say, "Why the hell did that get an Oscar?" Furthermore, while an actress like Meryl Streep might say it's easier for her to play drama than comedy, she still has the chops for both, while purely comedic actors often have a harder time going in the other direction, either proving unable to emote at that level or swinging so far into dramatic territory that they end up coming across as maudlin (see Williams, Carrey, and Sandler).
Point: Leave the timeless movies to the original Best Picture category, which Apatow isn't suggesting changing. What he wants is a category to honor the sillier but still well-made comedies like Bridesmaids that everybody heaps praise upon until awards season, when they suddenly fade into the background.
Counterpoint: But how do you draw a line between the comedies he's talking about and a comedy like Sideways? Are you going to call the category "Best Silly But Still Well-Made Comedy"? Because if you create a separate category just for comedies, than you have to include all comedies, and then you've got the same problem the Emmys have every year: the "comedies" that are really more comedy-dramas are going to hog all the awards and the Apatow-type comedies are still going to be left in the cold.
Point: Maybe, but so long as those Apatow-type comedies are at least nominated, they'll likely draw in larger and younger audiences who prefer those type of films over serious films like Doubt, and that's a win for everybody.
Counterpoint: Except nobody watches the MTV Movie Awards, where films like Bridesmaids are already nominated, to see who wins. The awards are beside the point in those shows. People tune in to see the spectacle and the (young, hip) actors they like, so unless the Oscars are going to redo their entire image -- in which case they'd no longer be the Oscars -- nominating a few comedies here and there isn't going to make a difference. Besides, the size of the audience shouldn't really matter -- the Oscars are an awards ceremony that happens to be televised, not a television show that happens to have awards.
Point: But if the audience for the Oscars gets small enough, they might not be televised anymore, and like it or not, that's going to take a considerable amount of prestige away from the awards themselves. Even if an actor doesn't care about receiving his award on TV, he still likely grew up watching other actors get their awards on TV, and the fact that he got his award differently is going to sting.
Counterpoint: ... Jane, you ignorant slut.
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