The Oscar: Hollywood’s most coveted award, surrounded by history and controversy

Winning an Oscar remains one of Hollywood’s highest honours, but the famous golden statuette comes with a long history of mystery, controversy and unusual rules.

The Academy Awards have grown far beyond their modest beginnings in 1929, when the first ceremony reportedly lasted just 10 minutes. Today, the Oscars are the centrepiece of a huge awards season involving studios, campaign consultants, critics, media outlets, stylists and thousands of people working behind the scenes.

The origins of the Academy itself were also far from simple. Hollywood producer Louis B. Mayer helped establish it at a time when the film industry was trying to improve its public image and strengthen the influence of major studios.

Even the origin of the name “Oscar” remains uncertain. One popular story says Academy librarian Margaret Herrick nicknamed the statuette after her uncle, though no one knows for sure who first gave the award its famous name.

Over the years, the Oscars have produced both celebrated choices and controversial decisions.

Classic films such as Citizen Kane and Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture award, while Crash and Green Book won the top prize. Other acclaimed films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Do the Right Thing and Hoop Dreams, were not even nominated for Best Picture. Acclaimed filmmaker David Lynch, meanwhile, never won a competitive Oscar.

Despite such criticism, an Oscar remains the most widely recognised award in the film industry.

The statuette itself is worth far less than its symbolic value. It costs about $400 to produce, but studios can spend tens of millions of dollars campaigning for awards. Winning can lead to higher salaries and greater career opportunities, although an Oscar is no guarantee of long-term success.

The trophy also comes with strict ownership rules. Winners of Oscars awarded after 1951 cannot sell or dispose of their statuettes without first offering them to the Academy for $1.

The popularity of the Oscars has also changed over the decades. Television audiences have risen and fallen since the ceremony was first broadcast in 1953, while the Academy has repeatedly faced criticism over its membership and lack of diversity.

In 2015, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite sparked widespread criticism and pushed the Academy to make major changes in its membership.

Critics have questioned the Oscars’ relevance almost since the awards began. Yet the ceremony continues to attract global attention every year.

For Hollywood, the Oscar remains both a symbol of artistic achievement and a reminder of the industry’s flaws — shaped by talent, ambition, money, power and, often, controversy.