Oscar member: I vote for 12 years a slave... even though I didn't watch it. Me: YOU HAD ONE JOB!!

[PortalThinker113]

I don't think anyone's throwing it under the bus, but it's absurd to know that people voted it as the best picture of the year when they hadn't actually SEEN the movie.

I think what a lot of people are saying is that, since this is Hollywood, if you lined up these 5 (or is it 10 now? Shows how little I care about the Oscars) movies nominated for Best Picture, and none of these voting folks had seen any of them, what would they choose? I think they'd choose either:
A: Whatever makes Hollywood look the most classy and sophisticated (Amadeus, The King's Speech, The Artist, Shakespeare in Love, etc.)
B: Whatever makes Hollywood look the most progressive (Crash, Platoon, Dances with Wolves, 12 Years a Slave)

Frankly, I don't give a rip about the Oscars. I think the vast majority of the audience now just wants to see what people are going to wear and don't really care about the movies either.

That's a very fair point, and like I said in my previous post, I was probably getting anxious about something that didn't really happen.

I think the former category you mentioned (classy and sophisticated) also takes into account very fluffy "feel-good" movies like The King's Speech and The Artist. The Academy does enjoy light, entertaining stuff that appears important but is really kind of thematically empty- stuff that doesn't end up standing the test of time all that well. One of the reasons that I was so happy about 12 Years A Slave's win is that one of the other contenders (American Hustle) fell firmly into that category, and at the beginning of awards season I thought Hustle would take the big prize. I was happy that they ended up going with the much better and more important pick at the end of the day. It also sort of saved Hustle's reputation, as well- if Hustle had won, it would forever have had the Shakespeare in Love-style brand of "taking the award away from something everyone else knew deserved it."

12 Years does have the "progressive" benefit in some regards, though. Wolf of Wall Street was equally good, and I doubt that was ever considered to actually win due to how "controversial" it was.