“The View” hosts aren’t too thrilled with the Academy’s decision to recognize a Twitter-voted fan favorite movie at the upcoming Oscars. The Academy announced Feb. 14 that Twitter users can vote on their favorite film of 2021 by tweeting the title along with #OscarsFanFavorite and #Sweepstakes. Voting is now open and Twitter users can vote up to 20 times per day. The winning movie will be revealed March 27 during the Oscars ceremony.
“I don’t like it,” Ana Navarro said on “The View” while discussing the new prize. “I don’t like it, because I think you’re gonna have some big studio hiring some troll farm in Russia or god knows where, and people are gonna be voting over and over again. It’s gonna be all those bots. I just think polls — Twitter polls, online polls — are too easily manipulated.”
Navarro added, “I also kind of like the snootiness of the Oscars, and recognizing cinematography and excellence, right? There’s a bunch of movies — well, you know, I have the pop culture knowledge of a radish. But there’s a bunch of movies that I watch because they won Oscars.”
Sara Haines agreed, adding that she likes the “snobbery of knowing what makes a great, artistic film.”
“We already have the People’s Choice Awards, where everybody weighs in on it, people on Twitter and what have you. I think it’s enough,” Joy Behar said. “I agree with [Ana], because I think the people who vote now, they are — I think — experts at these. They know what they’re doing. They watch the movies, they take pains to vote.”
Whoopi Goldberg, who won an Oscar for supporting actress with “Ghost” and is an Academy member, stressed that “moviegoers go to the movies for a different reason than Oscar voters do. “We are voting on our particular knowledge,” she said. “So, best actor comes from the group of actors who are voting. Best cinematographer is coming from the cinematographers.”
“People also believe that we are snooty, because we pick movies, sometimes, that people don’t know about,” Goldberg added. “It’s because of their excellence — their excellence in any given category. That’s what it is, that’s why we do that. We don’t ask the audience to do that because who’s got the attention span?”
The Twitter voting period runs from Feb. 14 through March 3. To encourage more people to vote, the Academy announced that three Twitter users who cast their votes will be selected for an all-expenses paid trip to Los Angeles to present at the 2023 Oscars.
