Has politics weighed on Oscars race?

Perhaps it is no surprise, given that 2012 was a US election year, but this year's Oscars crop includes a heavy dose of politics -- which has arguably influenced Hollywood's top awards race.

From gun control advocates blasting blood-spattered "Django Unchained," to rows over CIA torture that were triggered by "Zero Dark Thirty," this year's nominees have, whether coincidentally or not, fueled topical political debates.

The most obviously political film vying for Academy Award glory on Sunday, Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," even won a surprise backing from none other than former president Bill Clinton, on stage at the Golden Globes last month.


"A tough fight to push a bill through a bitterly divided House of Representatives -- winning it required the president to make a lot of unsavory deals... I wouldn't know anything about that," Clinton quipped at the Globes.





One Oscar-nominated film which definitely sheds a good light on a Democratic president -- Obama -- is Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden manhunt movie "Zero Dark Thirty."

Indeed, the risk of the film being seen as propaganda -- it climaxes with the deadly raid on the Al Qaeda chief's Pakistan hideout, a game-changing Obama triumph -- was such that it was only released after the November 6 election.

But the bigger political row it triggered was over its depiction of CIA "enhanced interrogation" techniques, widely seen as torture, and specifically how much role they played in tracking bin Laden to his Abbottabad compound.




But perhaps the most obvious victim of political controversy, in awards terms, has been Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained."


Days before its release, the massacre of 20 small children occurred in Newtown, Connecticut -- and America went into paroxysms of hand-wringing about gun violence, just as "Django" was gearing up for its big entrance.

A red-carpet premiere was called off, and a range of toys of the film's key characters was withdrawn and banned from eBay as "offensive."


"Yeah, I'm really annoyed," he told National Public Radio (NPR) in the US, saying his film had nothing to do with the deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

"I think it's disrespectful to their memory. The issue is gun control and mental health," he said.


The movie won Golden Globes for best supporting actor for Christoph Waltz and best screenplay for a visibly startled Tarantino ("This is a damn surprise!") but has otherwise failed to pick up any big prizes this season.

It is nominated in five Oscars categories, including best picture -- but even Tarantino admits it has little hope of the top honor.

"I don't think we're going to win best film," he told the BBC after the nominations were announced last month. "But the recognition, being invited to the party, is a lot of fun."