Disney at the Academy Awards, part Zwei
It’s tough to touch the glory that is Alan Menken, but I feel compelled to point out this article by the AP, where Menken joked that he was going to lose upon hearing the nominations:
“I was really blind-sided, completely blind-sided. Three nominations. I said, ‘Now we’re gonna lose.’”
Menken, 58, said he expects that the three “Enchanted” entries, co-written with Stephen Schwartz, may split the vote, improving odds for the other song contenders at the ceremony: “Falling Slowly” from “Once” and “Raise It Up” from “August Rush.”
The results were an exact echo of what happened at last year’s Oscars. Dreamgirls had three nominations up, but the Al Gore song won in the end. Frankly, I wasn’t surprised. Enchanted doesn’t hearken back to Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid, and the soundtrack itself was a tribute to the musical style of Disney in the 1990s, back when, y’know, princesses were all the rage before they decided to ditch all that for cows in a barn and buddy movies. Enchanted, admittedly, even being the rabid Menken fangirl that I am (and always will be), was no masterpiece.
It would’ve been nice if Menken finally won something after 1995’s Pocahontas (more than a decade already! Where has the time gone?!) but I do firmly believe the vote was split. For those who’ve been complaining that the Academy should die in a fire, I feel the great need to enlighten the masses on how voting actually works (and seriously, if you watched the Oscars, you would know). Skip the following paragraph if you don’t care.
Voting is not done by a super-sekrit government organization comprised of old men and George W. Bush. The Academy is comprised of “6000 motion picture professionals”, if Wikipedia is to be believed, which basically means people in the movie industry are the voters. They vote, and the results are compiled into a majority vote, in which the winner is declared. All you need to know from this is the movie people vote for their own movie people (which is why Crash won over Brokeback Mountain last year, since half the damn country was involved in production) So, the answer is no, you cannot wish to have the Academy die in a fire because in the event that you did, half of Hollywood would be gone. I don’t think the voting process is fair, but that’s how you go. The votes are, essentially, based on the voter’s own belief of what defines an ‘excellent movie’ than a ‘good’ one.
There has always been the stereotype of Disney films being geared solely for the kids, and to some extent, I feel that perhaps that stereotype spilled over into Menken’s songs as well. They are cheery, catchy, spectacular, romantic, everything you could find (and already found) in a Disney movie. Those songs wouldn’t sound as great for a person who thinks ‘great music’ must consist of orchestral wail, a choir, a guitar and a piano under a single spotlight.
Plus the already oft-mentioned fact there were three Menken choices on the list. Perhaps the vote would have turned out differently if “So Close” was the only one on that list… but then again, maybe not. Disney animated films (especially the Menken composed ones) has always had a history of having more than one nomination in the “Best Song” category, and despite all that, it still won.
I suppose we can only speculate at this point why Menken didn’t win this year, especially when the Academy doesn’t list out who voted what (Americans would do the usual Braveheart-battlecry of FREEDOM!!1!1 if such a thing were to be even considered). I adore his music to bits (even TLM on Broadway, which was a musical that I was determined to hate, but the POWER OF MENKEN CONVERTED ME), but from a personal standpoint, Enchanted just didn’t cut it for me, for some reason. Perhaps I shall do a review of it in the future.
