Anomalisa and the history of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature
Joey Sack ‘17 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Animated films have received great praise over the years, but it was only in 2002 when the Academy Awards added the Oscar for Best Animated Feature to honor these movies properly. Since then, most of the films awarded were made mainly with younger audiences in mind. That has changed this year, however, as Anomalisa, co-directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, is the first R-rated animated film to be nominated for Best Animated Feature. It is a milestone in the history of animated films and the Academy Awards’ recognition of animated movies, which is quite an interesting story in and of itself. Here is a brief overview of the history of the Academy and animated movies.
When the Academy Awards started in 1929, animated films were still in their infancy, with the first feature-length animated film only coming in 1937 with Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney received an honorary Oscar for the film, as no awards for animated films existed at the time. This would be the norm for the remainder of the 20th and into the 21st centuries.
A big milestone for animated films came in 1991, when Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, though it lost to Silence of the Lambs at the 64th Oscars. 19 years later, at the 2010 Academy Awards, Disney Pixar’s Up was nominated for the same honor, and 2011 saw Toy Story 3 nominated as well. While none of these films won the Oscar, they served as indications to the prestigious heights animated films can reach in terms of award shows.
Then, in 2002, at the 74th Academy Awards, three animated films, Shrek, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and Monsters, Inc., were nominated for the very first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, with Shrek ultimately taking home Oscar gold. While many have praised the addition of the category, some argued that the Academy added it to keep animated films from being nominated for Best Picture. Regardless, 13 animated films have won the award in the past 14 years, and the 14th winner will be awarded tonight. For the first time in this Award’s history, it just might be an R-rated film: Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s Anomalisa.
