Hollywood film critic Barry Norman has made a startling claim regarding the Oscars. According to the well-known and respected Norman, the members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences are not voting directly on selected films. Instead, he claims in an interview, that many of the 6,000 members of the organization who do not watch the films as required before voting have allowed their housemaids to decide.
Norman stated during an interview with the Radio Times “There’s the question of whether all the voters actually saw all the films. It’s not unknown for some, especially the elderly, to get their maids to watch them on DVD and deliver their opinions.”
This could be one of the reasons that the 2011 film, The Help, received four Academy Award nominations. The hit film takes place during the civil rights era and is about a young white woman and her relationship with two black maids.
