I know it’s cool to say that you are boycotting the Oscars (or the Olympics, or the Super Bowl, or whatever national or international event du jour) if you disagree in any way shape or form with the politics of the organizers or likely attendees. It’s today’s equivalent of the bus boycott in Selma, or the sit-ins at cafeterias, or burning your draft card. It’s an easy way to signal your virtue and your disgust.

I’ve done it myself. I boycotted an entire hockey season when the Flyers iced (pun intended) the statue of Kate Smith. Worse yet, and with an evil flourish, I started rooting for the Jersey Devils. I was certain that this perfidy, this profound betrayal of a team that didn’t even know I existed would strike a blow for justice.

Ultimately, I went back to rooting for the Flyers. The gravitational pull of city loyalty was too strong for me, and in much the same way I came back to bleeding green after Malcolm Jenkins and some other less-than-desirable former Eagles flew the coop. Life is too short to carry grudges, unless you’re Italian in which case you choose wisely. My relatives already know which ones have been axed from the will.

So I kind of smirked when I saw some social media friends telling me that they “weren’t watching” the Hollywood display of excess over excellence. I shared their distaste and disgust with the liberal and progressive posturing of so many misguided “artistes,” the kind who get up at the podium and talk about human rights with the sort of manicured nails that cost 50 dollars apiece, the kind who couldn’t find Gaza on a map if you gave them one, which they couldn’t read anyway because everyone asks the digital Sacajewea, Siri, for directions these days, the kind who think that wearing Black Lives Matter pins is chic but wearing Make America Great Again hats is a hate crime.

In a word, or four, I hate these people.

And yet, I do not hate the Oscars. In fact, I live for them every year. I don’t care who is wearing what (or whom.) I don’t care what comes in the $100,000 goody bags. I don’t care which interchangeable boy toy is on which arm. I do care about which films and actors win the awards, because regardless of what the naysayers think, an Oscar is the greatest artistic award that you can receive. It just is, and no amount of fawning over the Golden Globes will ever change that fact.

The Oscars take us back to the golden age of cinema, and even though that gold has been tarnished and is blotched with the mottled green of controversy and time, it is still an important moment to reflect on cinema. The movies are my favorite form of art, more than music, poetry or painting. It is the art of the common person, even though tickets now cost more than a mortgage payment, even though sitting alone in your room streaming a film is sad and anti-climatic, even though there are so many bad films out there.

Movies are snapshots of the different time periods that we’ve lived through, loved through, survived. They reflect our customs and our values, our desires and our hatreds, our hairstyles (unfortunately) and our fashions (worse.) They are the time capsules that we create, and reward us with moving memories.

So even though the awards ceremony misses the mark on so many occasions, the meaning of the ceremony dwarfs the pettiness in its importance.

For example. You can have two men get up there on the stage and accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing, and you can-as I almost did- wake the dead with my screams of “you butchered Jewish children, you evil monsters, get the hell off the stage!” but they are not the Oscars. They are unworthy recipients of a politically charged voting base.

And you can have a film about a “sex worker” win multiple awards and you can — as I actually did — almost get a hernia laughing at the fact that prostitutes now have resumes.

And you can have Zoe Saldana talk about her history as the first Dominican woman to win an Oscar and some other fellow talk about being the first Latvian to win an award, and some other person talk about how he was the first black costume designer to win an award, and some other person talk about how she was the first man pretending to be a woman but still equipped with a penis being nominated as a women (without a penis,) and all this other irrelevant stuff.

But all of these people are not the Oscars. They are bit players on the stage, momentary twinkles in the firmament of the galaxy. They have none of the weight of the great ones, the Wilders and the Fords, the Davises and the Garlands, the Gables and the Grants. That little nonentity of a sex worker will be forgotten tomorrow, while we will never forget the image of Audrey on a Vespa holding onto Gregory Peck’s waist. Some crazy Frenchmen can get up at the podium and sing their insipid song about a trans drug trafficker, and we will block it out as we remember the haunting melody that followed Gary Cooper down the street at High Noon, or the orchestral notes that played in the background as Vivien Leigh vowed to “never go hungry again.”

And we will ignore the lies of a disgruntled Palestinian and his claims of genocide while remembering the majesty of Moses parting the Red Sea, the righteous judgment of those at Nuremberg, and the modern exodus that created Israel. The documentary about Gaza will fade away in minutes, while the Ten Commandments, Judgment at Nuremberg and Exodus will be on a celluloid Olympus for the rest of our days.

And that is why I continue to watch the Oscars.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and lifelong Philadelphian. @flowerlady61