Ladies and gentlemen, I have the envelope in my hand. And the prize for Most Conflicted Awards Ceremony goes to … let’s see if I can tear this open … why, it’s the Academy Awards, of course!

Could there really be any other winner? Not the Golden Globes, voted for by the sycophantic freeloaders of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who are quite clear about what they want: to be pampered and partied on the studio dime. And not the Baftas, which aspire merely to equal the influence and gravitas of the Oscars. (Fat chance.) Whereas the Academy Awards themselves, celebrated but also mocked and pilloried, are in a cleft stick. On the one hand, they must retain their (admittedly erratic) record of rewarding artistic excellence. On the other, they seek to court the popular vote by handing prizes to films that the audience at home – the ones the broadcast relies on for its ratings – have actually seen. Viewers tend to switch off in their millions if the contest is between a clutch of masterpieces unlikely to trouble the multiplex.

That was the thinking behind the expansion of the best picture category in the 2009-10 voting from the usual five nominations to a possible 10. When the Coen brothers’ stark thriller, No Country For Old Men, beat four other indie-spirited, non-blockbusters (including Juno and There Will Be Blood) to the best picture prize in 2008, the Oscars recorded its lowest ratings in more than three decades: a paltry 32 million US viewers. Open up the field and there would be summer hits and superheroes among the nominees, or so the thinking went. But it didn’t work out that way, and now, faced with another ratings dip this year (26.5m viewers), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts has announced a brand new category: outstanding achievement in popular film. A statuette, in other words, for those movies not good enough to qualify as best picture; a booby prize, akin to giving the uncoordinated nerdy kid a gong simply for showing up on sports day. (And yes, I was that kid.)

But then the prize itself is a distraction because this category isn’t really about a movie at all. It’s a sop and a come-on to couch potatoes – it has nothing whatsoever to do with cinema. The Academy seems to have forgotten that its role is to recognise quality filmmaking (goodness knows they have enough trouble getting that right), not to flatter fanboys and fangirls on their Marvel-lous taste.

There has been a suggestion that the new category is a direct response to concerns that commercial and critical hit Black Panther may not make it into the 2018-19 best picture race. But here’s the thing: blockbusters already have their rewards. It’s called money. Piles and piles of it. If even a maligned calamity like Batman v Superman can make nearly $900m worldwide, it’s fair to say they don’t need the leg-up that an ornamental bookend or doorstop can bring. Awards have their own value.

In 2016, I interviewed David Kosse, then director of Film 4 and now president of STXInternational, who said that without Oscars “it would be much more difficult for films that aren’t genre-based and aren’t based on pre-existing properties, or which don’t feature big stars, to find an audience. The Oscars, and awards season in general, draws attention to films that might not have been able to afford to buy that attention.” Charles Gant, who compiles and writes the Guardian’s box-office column, backed up this view: “Without the awards, we would have to come up with some other means of throwing the spotlight on those sorts of films.”

Cinema has experienced a dramatic rupture in the last decade, with the middle-ground of mid-budget, largely adult-oriented movies disappearing, leaving only blockbusters at one extreme and shoestring indies at the other. (Streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon have rushed in to pick up the slack on films like Manchester by the Sea, The Meyerowitz Stories and Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq.) Multiply the awards, or start handing them out to boost ratings artificially, and the system breaks down. It’s the same as any currency – flood the market and it loses any worth it once had.

If the Academy is going to establish a popular film prize, then why not follow the suggestion of Adam McKay, director of the Oscar-winning The Big Short, and dole out statuettes for “best movie where shit blowed up good” and “hottest female alien”? Or they could mimic the long-running MTV movie award for best kiss while they’re at it. The winner would be a shoo-in this year: it could only go to the Academy for kissing populist butt.

• Ryan Gilbey is film critic of the New Statesman and writes on film and theatre for the Guardian.