On February 28th, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will, for the 88th time, award Oscars to the films they deem to have been the best released in 2015 (in America, at any rate ― due to obscure norms around showing films in Europe, many of them have only recently graced our shores). According to the bookies, the Best Picture race seems to be a close contest between Spotlight and The Big Short, while most of the other major races are more or less decided: prepare to see Leonardo DiCaprio pick up an overdue gong for The Revenant, and Brie Larson take one home for her fantastic turn in Lenny Abrahamson’s Room.

There has been much controversy around this year’s ceremony due to the lack of racial diversity among the nominees ― every single one of the 20 shortlisted actors is white, while none of the films nominated for Best Picture have any black actors in leading roles. The only thing even coming close to a silver lining is a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Straight Outta Compton. Prominent actors have criticised the Academy for their systemic racism, and this has shed light on the composition of the voting membership: voters are over 90% white, 75% male and have an average age of sixty-three. It’s no wonder exceedingly dull films like The Danish Girl and The Revenant do so well with voters. If The Revenant does indeed win, it will sit comfortably alongside other inoffensive films such as A Beautiful Mind, Crash, and The King’s Speech, films that seem almost specifically catered to appeal to the milquetoast Academy.

The symbolic effects of this lack of diversity seem reasonably obvious, even to those not especially attuned to the racial homogeneity of the Academy. When awards are only given to white artists, it sends the message that art produced by people of colour is somehow not as valuable as the art made by white people, which, as anyone who has seen A Beautiful Mind can attest, is probably not the case. Additionally, it creates a dearth of black role models, and strips the platform of the ceremony from black actors ― after all, the ceremony is still watched by millions worldwide, despite the endless parade of bland hosts (hopefully Chris Rock will shake things up a bit this year). When Halle Berry won the Best Actress award back in 2001 for Monster’s Ball, she gave an emotional acceptance speech in which she spoke of the “nameless, faceless women of colour” who would be inspired by her win. Yet almost fifteen years on, these women have had no one else to be inspired by ― Berry remains the only non-white woman to have won the award. Three black actors have since won the Best Supporting Actress prize, yet their roles are ones into which black actors in Hollywood often get pigeonholed: a Motown singer (Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls), a maid (Octavia Spencer in The Help), and a slave (Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years a Slave). This is not to say the recognition these women received was undeserved, but it underscores the propensity of the Academy to award people of colour only when their performances conform to certain stereotypes.

Beyond the cultural effects of this lack of recognition, its more tangible impact on the film industry is just as nefarious. By and large, films in Hollywood get produced in order to make money, and awards have a huge impact on this ― films that win, or even get nominated for, Oscars tend to receive a boost in revenue. This is particularly true for the middlebrow, “Oscar movies” discussed before ― my dad might go to see The Revenant because it got twelve nominations, but it’s unlikely the ten nominations for Mad Max: Fury Road will change his opinion that “it looks a bit much”. As such, there exists an incentive for movie studios to finance projects that they think will appeal to Oscar voters. So, mundane films by the likes of Tom Hooper, who continues to turn out tripe like The Danish Girl and Les Miserables, will get made, whereas filmmakers like Sean S. Baker (Tangerine – which, like The Danish Girl, features a transgender protagonist, but which unlike The Danish Girl, cast a transgender actor to play the leading role) are forced to operate outside the mainstream. Studios say they merely respond to consumer trends, but it’s not as if black people don’t go to the cinema, and it’s not as if white people refuse to see films that have black actors in them ― 12 Years A Slave made almost $200 million at the box office, in part due to its nine Oscar nominations and three wins. A large contingent of cinemagoers are influenced by the perceived merit of what’s on offer at the movies, and as long as the Oscars bestow this merit, mediocre films will get released at the expense of more exciting ones.

Leaving the racial undertones aside for a moment, there exists another problem with the Oscars ― what gives them the authority to decide that a certain film is the “Best” in a given year? Yes, the voting body is made up of expert actors, writers, directors, and technicians, but why does this group get to bestow an objective honour? Movies, like all forms of art, are inherently subjective ― they mean different things to different people, and no two people can experience them in the same way. I may have wanted to suffocate myself during Les Miserables, but there were scores of people crying during the screening I was at, and that’s perfectly reasonable. I found The Big Short tremendously entertaining, but my friend who came with me could not look past its sexism, and hated the whole thing. It may seem pointless or obvious to decry the Oscars for this reason, but because of their stature, this veil of objectivity has very real impacts. The experiences of some people become delegitimised ― people who find The Big Short sexist are either wrong, or else they’re right, but the sexism they perceive is somehow lessened by the fact that the film is also really funny. The Academy gave three nominations to The Hateful Eight, apparently unperturbed by the fact that Quentin Tarantino takes obvious glee in having male characters repeatedly punch Jennifer Jason Leigh in the face.

Similarly, people who enjoy films that are deemed to be “lowbrow”, and therefore ignored by the Oscars, become subject to snobbery and classism (in which I have absolutely been complicit). I may not have any particular inclination to go see the new Adam Sandler movie, but millions of people do, and when critics ridicule them because they are “stupid”, they determine that the people who like these movies are stupid too. Cultural snobbery is yet another way in which working-class people become disenfranchised and otherized by the mainstream. Holding the Academy up as some kind of bastion of quality allows us to perpetuate cultural inequalities that privilege the narratives and experiences of white, middle-class people, and then tells us we are correct in doing so.