ampas, the academy of motion picture arts and sciences, which awards the "oscars" is not synonymous with hollywood.

oscars are awarded based on the votes of the members of ampas.

ampas members are chosen by nomination/invitation, and _do not_ include random members of the general public. the membership is predominantly industry professionals.

the oscars are meant to honor the achievements of motion picture professionals by their peers, presumably evaluating each others' work for industry technical merits; the oscars are _not_ meant to be a reflection of box office earnings, lasting popularity of a film's message, or public adulation.

it is also inconsistent to first slam "hollywood" for not choosing the "most talked about and publically relevant" movies, and then complaining that hollywood is known for playing to the lowest common denominator for 80% of its product.

even the razzie winners regularly include some big box office winners, and audience favorties (albeit, for groaner drinking games at frat houses). 

hollywood, in so far as the word refers to an entity to which one can attribute motives, is there to make money. they do not exist to give out awards or provide publically relevant messages (unless one particular message makes more money than some other message).

the various awards (oscars, director's guild, writer's guild, independent spirit, actor's guild, bafta, etc.) evaluate the results based on their own individual standards and peer groups.

it is unreasonable to expect there to be any sort of correlation between the two.

some of the most popular movies are comedies (esp. escapist ones) and one of the most long-standing criticisms of the oscars is that they have always excluded comedies and comedic performances. however, this criticism is misplaced because dramas and dramatic performances are always cinematically more "relevant" to an industry peer group than is a comedy.

if there is sound proof that studios deliberately stack the nominations in favor of their own narrowly selected choices, and conspire to exclude otherwise great movies, then, yes, this is worth talking about.

however, many years feature multiple excellent movies, and only one of them can win. other years feature multiple excellent movies by the same studio/company, and there is a (probably unwritten) rule preventing any single studio from flooding the ballot with movies from their own roster.  

the pomp and circumstance surrounding the glamor show at the oscars may seem to suggest that it is some sort of reflection of audience desires. that is just nonsense.

there exist plenty of audience-choice awards (that are not as widely known), and presumably those awards honor "publically relevant" movies.

in any case, sturgeon's law holds sway in movies as in everything else, and it also applies to sub-categories and genres of movies. 90% of hollywood movies may be crap, but 90% of independent movies, and 90% of sundance mental-masturbations are also crap.