The Academy Awards are being held on Sunday (8:30 p.m. on ABC), a fact about which you care passionately, not in the least, or with the idle curiosity that attends a well-dressed annual bar fight. Regardless, let’s pause for a moment and imagine a world in which the Oscars don’t exist.

In fact, let’s imagine that the entire season from September to February, a five-month slog in which movies and stars are ranked and analyzed and celebrated and dismissed like racehorses on a daily tip-sheet, just forgets to happen. All the awards ceremonies and critics’ lists and guild bling; all the prognosticating, handicapping, second-guessing; the Oscar campaigns, nomination controversies, haute couture hissy-fits — gone, every last bit of it.

I do believe many of us would heave a sigh of relief at the prospect of a vast cultural silence. On the other hand, we’d miss some conversations — such as this year’s about the lack of diversity in both the nominations and the entertainment industry at large — that are well worth having. Looking at the larger picture, though, would the eradication of the yearly-contest mind-set — just speaking theoretically — be good for the movies or bad for them?

The answer’s hardly clear. On the face of it, declaring that “The Revenant’’ is a “better movie’’ than “Spotlight’’ or “The Big Short’’ or the other best picture nominees — not to mention any worthy movies not nominated, like “Carol’’ or “Tangerine’’ or even “Star Wars: The Force Awakens’’ — is patently ridiculous. Every film is its own window into an imaginary world, and the good ones convince you of that world while pulling you more deeply into it. Claiming that one well-made movie ranks above a very different well-made movie is like saying Mars is better than Neptune. (I expect a quick riposte from the American Astronomical Society.)

But ranking and sorting is a hard-wired human instinct, isn’t it? It helps us sift through enormous fields of incoming data and locate that which is, or should be, worthy of our time and attention. It also may be harmful in the long run, if only because our focus on the “best’’ can keep us from the equally good. Everyone knows the 2007 best picture winner, “The Departed,’’ is a must-see (especially in these parts), but who remembers the other nominees? They were “Babel,’’ “Letters From Iwo Jima,’’ “Little Miss Sunshine,’’ and “The Queen,’’ for the record, and they should still be watched and argued with, as should some movies that weren’t nominated that year, like “Children of Men,’’ “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ “Notes on a Scandal,’’ or (I’m serious) “Borat.’’

That said, the cream has a tendency to rise to the top. The best picture winner in 1953 was Cecil B. DeMille’s circus epic “The Greatest Show on Earth,’’ but who watches that anymore? Whereas two also-rans, “High Noon’’ and “The Quiet Man,’’ are on many people’s list of all-time classics and “Singin’ in the Rain,’’ which somehow failed to get a best picture nomination that year, is usually cited as the greatest Hollywood musical of all time.

So let’s throw out the idea that the “best picture’’ label — applied to either nominees or winners — actually designates the movies that stand the test of time. More accurately, they’re the films that sum up the cultural conversation of their particular year and awards season, a snapshot of the Academy’s general mind-set (enfeebled as that may be) and a reflection of what the creative community feels is its most noble effort. Think of the award as not so much “best picture’’ as “picture that makes us filmmakers feel best about what we do.’’

A more interesting question is whether the Oscar race actually creates the kind of movies that it awards. In other words, if there weren’t a potential Oscar for a comparatively risky, non-commercial proposition like “Spotlight’’ — or “Birdman’’ or “12 Years a Slave’’ or “The Artist,’’ best picture winners all — would they get produced in the first place? The Academy Awards have always been Hollywood’s apologia for making money during the rest of the year, and the past few decades have seen a rigid partitioning of the movie year into “summer,’’ which now runs from early April to late July, and “Oscar season,’’ which spans the months from early September to late February, even though all eligible movies have to have appeared on at least some movie screens by Dec. 31. (January, February, and August have evolved into well-known boneyards for movies deemed unfit for release elsewhere.)

Many different kinds of films are released in all those months, of course — for counter programming, if for no other reason — but the energies of the entertainment industry are focused on those twin factory conveyor belts of “commerce’’ and “art,’’ and they need to be loaded up with product. A savvy independent producer like Harvey Weinstein has fashioned an entire career out of identifying and/or making films of perceived Oscar caliber (which may or may not have anything to do with “best’’) and guiding them along that conveyor belt to the twin paydays of respect and profitability. (He has been so successful, in fact, that when Weinstein has no dog in the race, as is the case this year for the first time since 2008, it’s worthy of comment.)

Success creates precedent; the Oscar season needs feeding and so certain kinds of movies get bankrolled, made, sent out to the festival circuit, or given slowly rolled-out platform releases to introduce them to the media and the public. Campaigns are calculated months, even years, in advance. And the process benefits plenty of smaller, riskier films that don’t get nominated for an award but still get made because, you know, they might. I’m not surprised “Tangerine,’’ one of my 2015 favorites, was skunked from beginning to end of this awards season, but I’m not sure it would even exist without that possibility.

On the other other hand, though — does Oscar and its blingy brethren force the dichotomy of the movie year into movies that have good taste and movies that just taste good? If you take the whole glitzy parade away, would the movies that get written, green-lit, and produced represent Marvel’s and Disney’s world (and we just lived in it) or a genuinely more diverse crop?

Don’t forget that there used to be an immense range of mid-budget films that came out throughout the year and that consisted of dramas, romances, even medium-concept comedies starring people other than veterans of “Saturday Night Live.’’ The grand partitioning of the release schedule into Art and Commerce has sent such films — the former bread-and-butter of the movie studios — to your cable On Demand menu and their writers and directors to the brave new frontiers of TV. Taking the thought further, does it even make sense any more to consider only those films worthy that have had a theatrical release when most moviegoers see most of their movies at home or on laptops? With every year, Oscar recedes further into the past as an arbiter of how film is actually consumed.

Still, whichever movie wins tonight, it will be enshrined forever as a “must-see,’’ whether you actually see it or not. And certainly a best picture Oscar for “Spotlight’’ or “Brooklyn’’ or “Room’’ would open the door for similar “small,’’ “challenging’’ movies to get made down the line. But perhaps it’s worth wondering if we’re closing the door on movies that are neither art nor blockbusters but simply, unpretentiously good.

BURR, Page N10

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @tyburr.