ALONE YET NOT ALONE: A Most Favorable Disqualification

You may have heard about the film ALONE YET NOT ALONE, the Academy Award-nominated film that, in a true rarity, had its sole Academy Award nomination revoked this past week, but its unlikely that you'd have heard of it before this revocation.
It's not especially unusual for a little-heard of film to show up on the Academy Award nominations roster, but those usually show up somewhere in the Best Short Subject categories (Live Action, Animated and Documentary) or the Best Documentary Feature category, because those nominees rarely see release outside of a few film festivals.  For the 86th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2013, there were five nomination in the category of Best Original Song, including "Happy" from the smash-hit animated sequel, DESPICABLE ME 2; "The Moon Song" from the Best Picture-nominated HER; "Let It Go", the far away favorite from the surprise Disney animated smash-hit FROZEN; and "Ordinary Love", a U2 song, and the sole nomination for a would-be awards hopeful, MANDELA:LONG WALK TO FREEDOM.  The fifth nominee was from a film that few had heard of and far fewer had seen, ALONE YET NOT ALONE, for the song "Alone Yet Not Alone", by Bruce Broughton and Dennis Spiegel.

"If it was for reasons connected with a faith-based message, it shouldn't surprise us that Hollywood would shun Jesus." -Joni Eareckson Tada, performer of "Alone Yet Not Alone", on the disqualification of the song for the Academy Awards.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) acknowledges four previous revoked nominations since the Academy first distributed the awards in 1929, including 2011's Live-Action Short Film nomination Tuba Atlantic, disqualified for screening on Norwegian television prior to a U.S. theatrical qualifying run; 1992's Foreign Language Film nomination, A PLACE IN THE WORLD, submitted by Uruguay but disqualified after it came to light that it was mostly produced in Argentina; 1968's Documentary Feature nomination YOUNG AMERICANS, which actually won the award but was declared ineligible a week later after it was learned to have premiered in 1967, and thus not a 1968 film; and a 1931/1932 nomination (the awards functioned with a different calendar year back then) for the discontinued category of Best Short Subject- Comedy, STOUT HEARTS AND WILLING HANDS, for which no documented justification for disqualification can be found.  THE GODFATHER (1972) is an anomaly in that its iconic soundtrack was nominated for Best Original Score, but without a technical revocation of disqualification, the nomination was dismissed.  After it was discovered that one of the musical themes in the film, composed by Nino Rota, had been previously used by Rota for an Italian-made comedy, FORTUNELLA, in 1958.  Without disqualifying the film, the Academy opted for a re-vote on nominations, and THE GODFATHER did not make the cut in the re-vote.  AMPAS does not consider the initial nomination for Best Original Score the THE GODFATHER an "official" nomination.
On January 29, 2013, ALONE YET NOT ALONE's nomination for Best Original Song was revoked on grounds that the song's co-writer, Bruce Broughton, who is an executive committee member and former governor of AMPAS's music branch (which decides the nominations in Best Original Score and Best Original Song) had privately contacted other branch members for support of the song.  Now, it's no secret that filmmakers promote their films directly to Academy voters, hence "For Your Consideration" advertisements that show up on particular film industry publications around that time of year, whether for nominees to be voted for the win or for eligible nominees to win.  Studios may even send mailers and host special screenings specifically for voters, however, personal campaigning between Academy members is prohibited.
While it's remarkable for a nomination to be revoked, it's almost as remarkable that a film like ALONE YET NOT ALONE was even nominated in the first place.  There has been some derisive talk about the Academy disqualifying this particular film when its probable that the same sort of thing happens with many more prominent films that get away with it though.  On the other hand, it's hard to imagine how else a movie like ALONE YET NOT ALONE received Oscar attention.
ALONE YET NOT ALONE is based on an evangelically-themed novel of the same name, written by Tracy Leininger Craven, based on the true story of German immigrants Barbara and Regina Leininger, who were taken hostage by Delaware natives during the French-Indian War in 1750s Pennsylvania.  The film was produced by Enthuse Entertainment, an obscure Texas film studio that, according to its bare-basics website, strives to produce "God-honoring, faith-based, family-friendly films that inspire the human spirit to seek and know God".  Part of the evangelical cinema movement that's been gaining momentum ever since the 2008 presidential election and the subsequent Tea Party movement, ALONE YET NOT ALONE was produced by politically far-right activists with a shameless disdain for "political correctness", and endorsed by prominent like-minded activists.  Among the endorsements listed on the film's website, are the Family Research Council (listed as an "Anti-LGBT" hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), Tea Party darling Rick Santorum and Penny Nance, CEO/President of Concerned Women for America, who has publicly espoused the view that the "Age of Enlightenment and Reason" led to a way of thinking that "led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust".  Well, yeah, I suppose that's what Adolf Hitler might have argued, but I suppose the pre-existing European culture of antisemitism that the Nazis built on had nothing to do with medieval Christianity (hello, pogroms).

"The Indians taunt her by dying her fair skin dark and her golden hair black." -The Dove Foundation, "5 Dove" Review [highest rating]

None of that really has all that much to do with the remarkable Oscar nomination of ALONE YET NOT ALONE, because for all the bemoaning of "liberal Hollywood", the film community isn't likely to dismiss a faith-based or politically conservative film specifically for those factors.  The fact is that, while Hollywood seems to have a slight social advantage for the politically liberal, it's not disproportionate, with conservative viewpoints and all shades of grey in between.  I do get the feeling that the more conservative factions gravitate to behind the scenes works though, particularly on the corporate end of things, but it's not like they're each split clean through.  Anyway, the Academy is considered a more conservative area of the industry, a sentiment not helped by information revealed a couple years ago that showed the Academy's demographic makeup was in majority white and male and older than 50.  Old-fashioned, upstanding films like THE KING'S SPEECH defeat youth favorites like THE SOCIAL NETWORK and FORREST GUMP beats PULP FICTION and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.  Of course those are isolated examples, and liberal films have often had an edge; my point is that films don't lose out for endorsing one of the mainstream political ideologies (controversy doesn't help though).

"The Gospel is presented clearly in contrast to the brutal paganism of the Indians. It’s refreshing to see a movie without revisionist history." -Movieguide: The Family Guide to Movie and Entertainment

What makes ALONE YET NOT ALONE such an unlikely nominee is that it was made for only $7 million for a very specific audience of far-right Christians, and released last September in a grand total of 9 cities, primarily through the Bible Belt Midwest and Southern states (a wider release is set for June 13, 2014).  While it played successfully in these areas, it's doubtful that more than a few, if any, Academy voters ever saw the film, or even had any clue about it or its song without Broughton's illegitimate campaigning that fell just outside of the Academy's inconsistent but strict standards.  If the film had gotten more significant attention prior to the nominations, it's unlikely that it would have made a difference.  The song itself is unremarkable, but the single trailer released for the film is aggressively bad, narrated by a comically dramatic voice actor and filled shots of genial Aryan Christian pioneers suffering indignation at the hands of the "savage" and ridiculously menacing Indians covered in feathers and war paint, and the acting shown in the trailer ranges from mediocre but forgivable to laugh-out-loud amateurish.  The poster is as bad a Photoshop job as possible and seems to emulate a thrown-together DVD cover for a well-dated 1980s movie.  Granted, maybe the advertising branch of the film and its fans are just misrepresenting the film at extremes, and it could be really good, but that's unlikely outside of a Disney film. 
Speaking of Disney though, in the end, ALONE YET NOT ALONE's nomination was practically pointless, because Disney, a powerhouse of movie music, has an unbeatable juggernaut this year in "Let It Go", which undoubtedly was pivotal in propelling FROZEN's soundtrack to the number one spot on the Billboard 200.  In fact, while there were a few who noticed ALONE YET NOT ALONE amongst the Oscar nominees, it never gained any significant attention until the nomination was revoked.  So despite all the righteous indignation at a little Christian fundamentalist underdog movie having its nomination revoked, nothing could have been more fortunate for its makers.