Are we to surrender these hard-won rights in favor of the hectic emotions of people who claim a distant kinship with a quasi-mythological figure who was uneasy with both reading and writing and preferred to recite? This is without precedent. Are we now to be dogged with lawsuits by those in whose veins the blood of Henry VIII, Mussolini, Columbus, or Ivan the Terrible can be alleged to flourish? (At least—unless you believe Dan Brown—this will not be such a problem in the case of the Virgin Mary.)

The thing would be ridiculous if it were not so hateful and had it not already managed to break the nerve of one Danish newspaper. In Ireland a short while ago, a law against blasphemy was passed, making it a crime to outrage the feelings not just of the country’s disgraced and incriminated Roman Catholic Church but of all believers. The same pseudo-ecumenical tendency can be found in the annual attempt by Muslim states to get the United Nations to pass a resolution outlawing all attacks on religion. It’s not enough that faith claims to be the solution to all problems. It is now demanded that such a preposterous claim be made immune from any inquiry, any critique, and any ridicule.

This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. All democratic countries and assemblies should be readying legislation along the lines of the First Amendment, guaranteeing the right of open debate on matters of religion and repudiating the blackmail by law firms and individuals whose own true ancestry would not bear too much scrutiny.

To understand why requires drilling down into the mechanics of voting systems. It’ll only hurt for a minute. From 1946 until last year, the voting worked the way Americans are most familiar with. Five pictures were nominated. If you were a member of the Academy, you put an “X” next to the name of your favorite. The picture with the most votes won. Nice and simple, though it did mean that a movie could win even if a solid majority of the eligible voters—in theory, as many as seventy-nine per cent of them—didn’t like it. Those legendary PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants don’t release the totals, but this or something like it has to have happened in the past, probably many times.

This year, the Best Picture list was expanded, partly to make sure that at least a couple of blockbusters would be on it. (The biggest grosser of 2008, “The Dark Knight,” was one of the better Batman adventures, but it didn’t make the cut.) To forestall a victory for some cinematic George Wallace or Ross Perot, the Academy switched to a different system. Members—there are around fifty-eight hundred of them—are being asked to rank their choices from one to ten. In the unlikely event that a picture gets an outright majority of first-choice votes, the counting’s over. If not, the last-place finisher is dropped and its voters’ second choices are distributed among the movies still in the running. If there’s still no majority, the second-to-last-place finisher gets eliminated, and its voters’ second (or third) choices are counted. And so on, until one of the nominees goes over fifty per cent.

This scheme, known as preference voting or instant-runoff voting, doesn’t necessarily get you the movie (or the candidate) with the most committed supporters, but it does get you a winner that a majority can at least countenance. It favors consensus. Now here’s why it may also favor “The Hurt Locker.” A lot of people like “Avatar,” obviously, but a lot don’t—too cold, too formulaic, too computerized, too derivative. (Remember “Dances with Wolves”? “Jurassic Park”? Everything by Hayao Miyazaki?) “Avatar” is polarizing. So is James Cameron. He may have fattened the bank accounts of a sizable bloc of Academy members—some three thousand people drew “Avatar” paychecks—but that doesn’t mean that they all long to recrown him king of the world. (As he has admitted, his people skills aren’t the best.) These factors could push “Avatar” toward the bottom of many a ranked-choice ballot.

The Hurt Locker var en film, som de fleste kunne se kvaliteten i, og derfor har den rangeret højt på de flestes lister. Avatar derimod, har mange haft en skepsis overfor (mig inklusive), så selvom den har fået mange 1. pladser har den også fået mange på nr. 10. Med det nye system vinder den film, som de fleste rent faktisk synes om, ikke kun den, der har fået flest førstepladser. Læs resten, der er endnu mere.

P.S. – Berlingske Tidende skriver her, at prisen også kan være politisk betinget. Den med at favorisere en kvindelig instruktør køber jeg, men argumentet om, at prisen går til Hurt Locker fordi den er “anti-krig” opfatter jeg som meget mærkeligt (og det kommer da også fra Michael Moore, der ikke har sagt to sammenhængende sætninger de senete 15 år). For det første er den overhovedet ikke politisk, tværtimod er den da om noget sympatisk overfor soldaterne og deres indsats, selvom de bliver vanvittige af den. For det andet har der de seneste år været en lang række meget kritiske og politiske film om Irak-krigen, men det har ikke givet dem nogle Oscars. For det tredje er “Avatar” jo faktisk en meget eksplicit anti-Irak-krig film, inklusive i replikker og det hele. Så hvis man ville et politisk statement, skulle man da stemme på den? Hvis prisen er politisk skal det snarere ses som en opbakning til soldaterne, som da også kom fra både manuskriptforfatteren til The Hurt Locker og Bigelow selv. Moore er en idiot, Berlingske bør ikke citere ham uden lige at tænke efter først.

Opdatering: Her er TIME Magazines bud på, hvorfor Avatar tabte. Gode pointer om alderen og smagen hos akademiets medlemmer.