I love movies. I love the film industry. I love the entertainment business.

I don't care about the awards associated with them.

To me, while winning awards help a good movie get buzz and recognition, I like watching movies that appeal to me and not to the critics. I used to watch the Oscars every year thinking that they mattered, I was happy when my favorite movie won an award and mad when it didn't. But now, I reached a point when I've become jaded with the campaigns and Florentine politics of awards. I realized that I was relying on awards to validate my love and admiration for a movie where in reality my love and admiration for a movie should be based on my viewing experience alone.

So I wasn't gonna watch the Oscars this year until I saw that my favorite movie of the year was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actor. Get Out was never meant to be an Oscar film, it came out in February of last year. I usually don't see movies multiple times but I have seen Get Out a total of FIVE times. Even though the odds of it winning Best Picture are low, I am going to advocate five reasons why Get Out should win the biggest award at this 2018 Academy Awards.

Before we begin here's a video about the history of Oscar bait done by former Nostalgia Chick Lindsay Ellis, she describes the flawed structure of Oscar bait campaigns. This is why I want to buck the trend of Oscar Bait films and see Get Out win Best Picture.

Note: There is a Harvey Weinstein reference in the video but it was released in 2016, the year before he was exposed.

1. Everyone Actually Saw It

I'll never forget seeing the first teaser trailer for Get Out last year. It looked strange and weird initially, but there was something new and cool about it that made me wanna go see it. Little did I know that it became one of the most praised and beloved movies of 2017 just about EVERYONE I knew, movie fan or not, was curious and wanted to go see it.

So instead of awarding the Best Picture Oscar to a movie that about 30-40% of the American population actually saw, how about giving it to a movie that just about everyone went out to go see?

It's happened before, movies like Gone With The Wind, Titanic, and The Lord of The Rings won Best Picture and we're the highest grossing and most watched movie the year they came out. Get Out wasn't the highest grossing movie of 2017 but it was one of the most watched and popular. Popularity with audiences usually shouldn't dictate what should be considered the Best Picture, but I think this is a rare exception.

Will the Academy come off as pompous and gullible to the business again and give the award to the movie that was the most campaigned and advocated by studios? Or will they separate themselves from the politicking and actually pick the best overall film?

2. Great Social Commentary

Jordan Peele is often quoted saying that Get Out was inspired and written during the first term of President Barack Obama in a state of America which he calls "The Post-Racial Lie." The initial intent of the movie was to be a wake-up call to America showing how institutional and casual racism still exists, with the original ending being tragic and depressing.

In the wake of national outrage over police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement and the election of President Donald Trump, Peele changed the ending of Get Out to break new ground with a black protagonist in a horror movie surviving in the end.

It's extremely difficult to have an open discussion about race in America with others, but having an entertainment product like Get Out to serve as the basis for that type of discussion helps tremendously. Movies and peoples opinions on movies make for unifying and easy discussions between people and they can use their opinions on Get Out and it's themes on how they think it reflects society today.

3. Genre Mixing

Jordan Peele's filmmaking for his directorial debut was influenced by classic horror films such as The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, Night of The Living Dead, and The Stepford Wives in creating an eerie atmosphere in a realistic setting.

But Get Out is not just a horror film, it has science-fiction, sociocultural context, and even comedy. There are too many bad horror movies out there that are "Just Horror" and they are quickly forgotten because they have nothing else to offer except for cheap jump scares.

Some will say that you can't give the award for Best Picture to a movie that is primarily horror because it's considered a schlock genre that offers nothing of large substance. There has been, however, a horror movie that won Best Picture before with The Silience of The Lambs in 1991. That movie too was released in February of that year and it managed to win Oscars for the five major categories: Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress. So if that "horror" movie can do it, why not Get Out?

4. Lives On Cultural Lore

Here's an experiment, what movies do you think of when you think of the 80s?

The Shining, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, E.T., Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, The Terminator, The Goonies, Aliens etc. etc.

Now here is a list of every Best Picture Winner in the 1980s:

Ordinary People

Chariots of Fire

Gandhi

Terms of Endearment

Amadeus

Out of Africa

Platoon

The Last Emperor

Rain Main

Driving Miss Daisy

How many of those movies have you actually seen? Two? Three?

Everyone knows what movies have lived on to define the culture of the 80s, while Oscars have swung and missed at crowning the film of the year almost every time.

So fast-forward to today, whether or not it wins Best Picture, Get Out will live on as one of the most influential and culturally significant films of its time. So how great would it be if the Oscars made themselves more relevant by crowning the movie that will live on? Rather than crowning the movie that will have a lot of buzz the year it comes out, but slowly fades away as time goes on (With all due respect to Three Billboards and The Shape of Water).

5. It Deserves It

This is the simplest reason but it's still true. Get Out deserves to win Best Picture. It's a great experience to watch the first time, and it's a great experience to watch it again and again. The other movies nominated for Best Picture are still all good, but Get Out is just as good if not better, and it will still hold up for decades to come.

Get Out is not just a great horror movie, it's not just a great piece of entertainment, it is a great film and a remarkable piece of cinema.

So Oscars, how about crowning the movie that the public has already crowned, and will be crowned by future generations while the other nominees slowly fade into irrelevancy. Make cinephiles and casual moviegoers actually care about the Academy Awards when they're not mixing up the winning envelopes.

And if you don't give it to Get Out? Then we'll just go and GET OUT of caring again.