WOW! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just revoked the nomination of “Alone Yet Not Alone” for Original Song.
This would be the sixth time in history that a nomination (or a winner) has been revoked, but first time for electoral impropriety. Now what is electoral impropriety you ask?
It means that the producers of the song or the movie or anyone associated in making of the movie “strongly” lobbied for the song to be included in the nomination list for the adequate category. In this case it’s the composer of the song (Bruce Broughton) who has acknowledged that in some ways he was trying to influence the members of his branch to consider the song for an Oscar nomination. Mainly, he has stated that he wrote some people “take a look“. That seems innocent, right?
BUT, this is what we’ve only had the chance to find out. Can the Academy guarantee that this hasn’t happened with nominees in other categories? I mean this guy practically admits it, what about those that don’t and no one has told on them? Or do we live in this perfect world where nobody lies all of a sudden?
I think that this kind of disqualification opens Pandora’s box for unethical behavior accusations when it comes to getting a movie or a song nominated for the Oscars. It also opens a room for serious suspicion among the rest of the competition and other contending nominees who didn’t make it to this years Oscar nominations.
Now there are only four songs left in the Original Song category and the Academy doesn’t intend to replace “Alone Yet Not Alone”. The nominees that left are “Happy” from Despicable Me 2, “Let it Go” from Frozen, “The Moon Song” from Her and “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: The Walk to Freedom.
Honestly I didn’t even listen to the song when the nominations were announced, but today I did. It’s a nice song, I like it.
Throughout the history of the Oscars these are the other nominees or winner disqualifications:
-In 1932 for Short Subject – Comedy, Stout Hearts and Willing Hands, nomination revoked and replaced.
-In 1968 in Documentary Feature the nomination and winner Young Americans got disqualified.
-In 1972 for Original Score, The Godfather, nomination revoked due to not-so-much original.
-In 1992 for Best Foreign Film, A Place In The World was deemed that it doesn’t quite originate from the country that the production states, which was Uruguay.
-And in 2011 for Best Live Action Short, Tuba Atlantic, but after the awarding ceremony and the movie didn’t even win. Weird. I mean they already lost, just let it be.