It’s beginning to look a lot like 1991. A former Disney starlet is on track for a Best Actress nomination. One of cinema’s greatest villainous performances is a sure thing for an acting Oscar. And, due to a relatively disappointing crop of Academy Award contenders, an animated feature is being talked about for Best Picture. One major difference between now and 1991, however, is now there’s a separate Oscar category for Best Animated Feature. While that doesn’t mean Wall-E can’t be the first animated film nominated in the top category since Beauty and the Beast, it does potentially mean that it shouldn’t be.

Historically, animated features have been marginalized by the Academy, though not unfairly. The first of its kind in the U.S., Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was not adequately recognized at the 1938 Oscars, so the Academy gave Disney a special Honorary Award (in the form of one normal-sized statuette and seven miniature statuettes) in 1939 to make up for it. The official credit given to Snow White was that it was a “significant screen innovation,” that “pioneered a great new entertainment field.” Basically, but not technically, this designated animated features as a new, separate art form from live-action motion pictures. Fantasia was similarly set apart a few years later with two Honorary Awards spotlighting the film’s achievements in sound and music, yet this time credit was given to the film for “widening the scope of the motion picture as entertainment and as an art form.”

Still, for almost fifty years, the closest an animated feature came to being nominated inclusively in such a scope for Best Picture were live-action films incorporating animation, such as Anchors Aweigh and Mary Poppins. It should have officially been made clearer in the 1930s or 1940s that animated features are in a class of their own. Since 1932, the Academy has differentiated between animation and live-action with its short subject categories, but no corresponding distinction was ever made for features, possibly because there weren’t enough animated features to recognize with a separate award for many decades. Even today, the Best Animated Feature Oscar is only given if there are a certain number (eight) of animated features eligible in that year.

Thanks to the Best Animated Feature Oscar, though, there is greater encouragement for the mainstream production of this kind of film and also a greater acknowledgement of foreign feature animation. Some critics might argue that it seems to lower the esteem of animated features, yet the creation of the category was in fact pushed for by animators, according to the AMPAS press release announcing its inception (the animators’ campaign, spearheaded mostly by Dreamworks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg, was apparently fueled by the snub of Chicken Run as Best Picture in 2001). The Academy’s error, then, was in continuing to allow animated features to be eligible for Best Picture rather than renaming that “top” category Best Live-Action Picture. Now, if Wall-E or any other animated film is recognized in that category, the Best Animated Feature Oscar will indeed appear to be a lesser honor.

An unsourced claim on Wikipedia says the existence of the Animated Feature category creates a sort of psychological effect, which blocks voters from considering an animated feature for Best Picture. However, with enough campaigning from Disney and plenty of prodding from the media (blogs especially), Wall-E may have sufficient placement in the consciousness of Academy members to allow such a nomination to happen. The call for a Best Picture nod for the film has been around and growing since New York magazine’s Vulture blog first championed the idea back in June, writing that it “would be the smartest thing the Academy’s done in years.” For ratings, perhaps, but individual members themselves do not think of nor are they encouraged to consider telecast viewership when marking their ballots. As a celebration of great filmmaking, though, it would be smarter for voters to acknowledge Wall-E’s place and prestige as a front-runner in the Best Animated Feature category and then pick another deserving film, which isn’t likely to be recognized elsewhere, to nominate as Best Picture. For example, how about a popular and critically acclaimed foreign film that hasn’t been submitted for consideration in the foreign-language category, such as Tell No One or Let the Right One In?

In July, Time magazine, which referred to the separate Animated Feature category as “Oscar’s cartoon ghetto,” began sampling quotes from supporters like New York and went so far as to call the film an “Obamaesque trailblazer.” In some way, Wall-E could resonate with Academy voters with relation to Obama, but perhaps only because it is one of the few hopeful, feel-good movies contending at a time when Bush–inspired negativity is supposedly no longer welcome (New York writer Logan Hill also acknowledged Best Picture candidate Slumdog Millionaire as similarly fitting the optimism bill after Fox Searchlight’s COO referred to the film as “Obama-like”). And maybe the environmentalist theme of Wall-E will be heavily supported by liberal Academy members, but ultimately the film seems even more preachy and, at times, dystopic than even The Dark Knight, let alone An Inconvenient Truth (which, by the way, had to settle on Oscar’s documentary ghetto and wasn’t considered Best Picture material, either).

One significant point against the likelihood Wall-E receiving a Best Picture nomination was noted by Anne Thompson at Variety: actors tend to vote for live-action films because they feature live actors. Surely actors, forever in fear of being replaced by computer-generated characters, look at an eerily realistically rendered computer-animated film like Wall-E and contemplate the worst for their profession. Still, on the other hand, actors could actually celebrate Pixar for making an animated film that incorporates live actors (a kind of reversal of Anchors Aweigh and Mary Poppins, no?). But if actors want to pay respect to this technique, they should completely surprise Oscar prognosticators (and pay them back for another 2001 snub) by nominating Fred Willard for Best Supporting Actor.

Maybe Wall-E is one of the best films of 2008, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be recommended for a Best Picture nomination. The Oscars are never an exact or fair measure of a year’s best in cinema, and even Oscar bloggers should be aware of the politics and logic of the Academy. This is the same organization that, for its first awards, ruled The Jazz Singer ineligible for Best Picture (or “Best Production” as it was named then) because it had the unfair advantage of being a sound film. Instead, the landmark film received a Special Award (almost like Disney received in 1939). Perhaps it is best, then, to think of animated features as also having an unfair advantage. After all, particularly with computer animation, they allow for more ease in certain aspects of direction, cinematography and special effects. In that case, let us, if not the Academy, view the Best Animated Feature category as the actual “top” category and shake off this unnecessary desire for an animated film to win “Best Picture.” Now, can we re-channel our energy into campaigning for Wall-E to be nominated in other categories, like Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction?