Expanded List of Best Picture Nominees for Oscars

This year, the Best Picture category for this year's Academy Awards has been doubled, expanding from its usual five nominees to ten. These ten films include selections that appeal to everyday filmgoers, not just movie buffs. The nominees are Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up, and Up in the Air.

But exactly why was the nominees list expanded for the 82nd Acacdemy Awards ceremony? The shift to ten nominees (the first time this occurred was during the 1943 ceremony when Casablanca won) was primarily sparked by a decline in ratings for the award show. Also in recent years, Oscar voters have been singling out films that were often unfamiliar to even regular moviegoers. The Academy hopes that the inclusion of some of the year's most popular films will not only generate a bigger audience for the show, but also represent a diverse slice of film genres, audience appeal and critical acclaim.

In the reading for this week in Practices of Looking, one of the sections discussed the concept of taste. According to Sturken and Cartwright, taste is judgment informed by experiences relating to one’s class, cultural background, education, and other aspects of identity. The Best Picture Oscar races in recent memory have included nominees that would be considered, as the authors put it, highbrow. The average filmgoer doesn't watch movies like Milk or Michael Clayton (Best Picture nominees during 2008 and 2007 ceremonies, respectively). Often people hear about these kinds of movies for the first time during the award show season. Likewise, films that usually attract massive audiences, blockbusters such as The Dark Knight and Transformers (released in 2008 and 2007, respectively) are never taken seriously as contenders in the Best Picture category. Sturken and Cartwright's idea of taste can be applied here in two ways:

1. Films (interestingly once thought of as low culture during the very early years of cinema) can either be classified as highbrow or lowbrow


2. Those who watch movies can either have good or bad taste, based on the films they choose to watch.

But how are films considered to be highbrow or people considered to have good taste? According to our authors, these classifications are culturally specific. In order to be considered a film connoisseur, one is expected to be well-versed in classic films as well as familiar with art or independent films that often lie outside of reach for the everyday moviegoer. These are the people who have established the criteria for what is considered high (art, independent, and documentary films) and low (action franchise blockbusters and chick flicks) culture in the movie world.

As evidenced by the shift to encompass a more varied and, more importantly, familiar, spectrum of films in this year's nominees for Best Picture category, there appears to be somewhat of a democratization of the art of film.

To see a complete list of all of this year's nominees, click here.