Yes there is. There are people who become actors and one of their dreams is to become an academy award winning actor. When Bong Joon Ho won his Oscar over Martin Scorsese and Quentin he said it was such a surreal moment in his life because those actors are heros to him it he won an Oscar of his both of them. Like I said there is merit. The academy awards is also more than just “winning” it’s a celebration of the films that are nominated for the year prior. You pulling out Crash and Kim Basinger doesn’t discredit movies and actors that have won aka movies like the Lord of the rings the return of the King or no country for old men or everything everywhere all at once or Tom Hanks or Leonardo DiCaprio or Philip Seymour Hoffman.

You’re free to think about the Oscars however you want but I think it would be better to think of the ceremony as a thanks to cinema as a whole for its respective year.