Marketing. The Oscars were conceived as a marketing ploy back when movies were in turmoil over the introduction of "talkies," and scandals were cutting into business. Audiences of the day were far more socially conservative than now.
Louis B. Mayer started them as a way, he said, to unite and control the five main branches of the movie business: actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers. Mayer knew what nitwits populated the industry even then. He said, "I found the best way to handle them was to hang medals all over them." The Oscars helped to market movies and those who worked in them as somehow special, glamorous, above mere ordinary people. It worked and spawned innumerable copycats.
Good history.
Now there is a “dog poop” awards show every other day.
Nice turds, there :-)