Should animated films be considered for Best Picture at the Academy Awards?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Should animated films be considered for Best Picture at the Academy Awards?
Position‹2 of 2: No, animated films should not be considered for Best Picture at the Academy Awards
Argument1 of 3›: The emotional responsibility of acting

Films are heavily dependent on the performances given by the actors and actresses. Acting techniques used in animated film differ greatly from those in live action films.

The argument

The objection is not that animated films are lesser works, but that the category would compare performances that are not doing the same job. While both animated and live action film's success relies heavily on the performance of actors and actresses, the way emotion is conveyed differs greatly depending on which of the two a film is, and Best Picture is judged in part on how effectively a film moves the people watching it. In animation the work of performance is divided. Animation requires voice actors to convey emotion by primarily using vocal cues, so the performer works with timing, breath, pitch and inflection alone. Physical emotional cues, such as crying or smiling, are the responsibilities of artists and animators, who supply them separately and often long after the voice has been recorded. What reaches the audience as a single emotional performance is therefore assembled from the contributions of several people working in different media at different stages of production. In live action films no such division exists. The actors and actresses are responsible for conveying vocal, facial, and physical cues at once, in a single take, with each element having to be consistent with the others in the moment of performance. That is a different task and a different kind of achievement, and its success or failure belongs to one identifiable person rather than to a team. Because emotional effectiveness in the two forms is produced by such different means, a judgement ranking one against the other has no common standard to apply. Choosing between them means weighing an integrated individual performance against a composite built by many hands, and whichever way the comparison falls it will be measuring something other than what it claims to. Animated and live action movies should therefore not be directly compared in the same categories.

Premises

[P1]In live-action film, actors convey emotion through vocal, facial and physical cues all at once. [P2] In animation, voice actors supply only vocal cues while artists and animators handle the physical and facial expression. [P3] Because the emotional responsibility of acting is divided so differently, the two forms cannot be fairly compared in one category. [C] Therefore, animated films should not be considered for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Counter-arguments

In both live action and animated films, emotion must be conveyed to tell a compelling story and to create a good film. It doesn't matter who has the responsibility of conveying emotions as long as they are conveyed in a way that makes sense and serves to benefit the story.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] In general, it is the responsibility of the director to capture and convey the emotions of the actors to the members of the audience, no matter the medium of the film.