Episode
The Oscars and the Making of Hollywood
- Podcast
- Explaining History
- Published
- Mar 14, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2699
- Processing state
processed- Canonical source
- http://explaininghistory.org
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Summary
In this special episode of the Explaining History Podcast, recorded just days before the 2026 Academy Awards, we're joined by film and media historian Monica Sandler of Ball State University to explore what the Oscars tell us about American culture, power, and the film industry itself. Monica brings her deep expertise to bear on these questions, tracing the Oscars back to their founding in 1929 as a deliberate attempt to reframe film as an art form—a response to the 1915 Mutual Decision that denied movies First Amendment protections and labeled the industry "plain and simple" commerce. From Will Hays's 1930 speech describing the awards as "an educator of public taste" to the New York Film Critics Circle's 1936 declaration that the Academy was "completely out of touch," the tension between industry insiders and cultural arbiters has been there from the start. We dive into the economics of awards campaigning—how smaller films depend on Oscar success for profitability, while blockbusters don't need the validation—and the transformation of that process by Harvey Weinstein, who turned awards campaigning into a brutal, multi-million-dollar blood sport. The rules the Academy has had to create in response tell their own story. The conversation also grapples with the Oscars' troubled relationship with race and representation. Monica discusses the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite movement, which forced the Academy to overhaul its membership—then 90% white, 75% male, with an average age of 65—and the complicated legacy of that change. We talk about the first person of colour ever nominated, Merle Oberon in 1936, who passed as British and whose racial identity was unknown to the public, a poignant illustration of the barriers that existed. And we look forward: to the rise of streaming, the con…