(Note: This is a fictional creative writing exercise, inspired by hours of contemplation of which animated performances have been most worthy of attention over the years. This feature imagines that a Best Voice Performance category was added to the Oscars following Beauty and the Beast’s nomination for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards. Each week I’ll cover the hypothetical nominees and winner from one year of animated performances.)
After a disappointing slate of nominees at the 66th Academy Awards, the speculation was that another year of mediocre nominees would doom the category once and for all. Fortunately, there was a savior on the horizon, in the form of another big release from Disney, The Lion King. It was even speculated that the film could take all five of the nomination slots, given the strength of its casting, its popularity and yet another dearth of competition. Even if The Lion King ended up with all of the nominations, it was already predicted that the film’s mere presence would be enough to grant the category a stay of execution for at least another year. Continue reading
Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards, in a moment that changed the face of the animated film landscape forever. It signaled that the Disney Renaissance that began two years earlier with The Little Mermaid (or perhaps even earlier with Oliver & Company) was not just a fluke and was destined to continue on. It showed that animation is just as important as other types of film, and that they could be just as artistic and meaningful. And while it eventually lost to The Silence of the Lambs, it still stood as the moment when animation as an industry and a media announced itself as an equal to the rest of Hollywood. And while it was a number of years before feature length animation received its own category in the awards (2001) and even longer before another animated film would be nominated for best picture (2009’s Up), the fact that animated films are now consistently among the highest grossing films each year and are often the most popular and longest lived of new releases owes a lot to Beauty and the Beast.
