Tomorrow marks the four-month anniversary of Patrick Swayze’s death at the hands of Willy Lopez pancreatic cancer. In the time since, basic cable stalwarts like AMC and and TNT have accordingly paid their limited commercial interruption tributes to 1991′s Sexiest Man Alive.

Between 1984 and 1991, Swayze couldn’t miss at the box office or in the cotton panties of young schoolmarms, but his turn as Sam Wheat in 1990′s Academy Award-winning Ghost stands out.

That’s right, the Academy Award-winning Ghost. Actress Whoopi Goldberg took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, while screenwriter and obvious gentile Bruce Joel Rubin won Best Original Screenplay. The film was further nominated for Best Original Score and Best Picture, losing the latter to Avatar: The Prequel. In all, Ghost received 16 awards from various cinematic governing bodies, including Vincent Schiavelli’s upset of Harry Dean Stanton in a heated battle for the Danny Trejo Memorial Wheel of Cheese for Ugliest Character Actor.

We certainly all love Ghost; I’ve seen it bake ziti to perfection, mend broken hearts, and even patch up gunshot wounds like the Holy Grail’s scalding hot Jesus Water in Last Crusade. But as we blindly pound dick-first into 2010, it’s worth asking: How many of those 16 awards would go to Ghost today?

Consider the Best Picture winners of the decade we’ve left behind. Slumdog Millionaire blinded children with acid. No Country for Old Men murdered an innocent widow. The Departed killed just about everyone. Million Dollar Baby was cruelest of all, presenting a triumphant conclusion mere frames out of reach only to wrench it away in horrific genuine Eastwood style. It’s been seven years since a film with a traditionally happy conclusion was tapped for Best Picture.

That’s not to say Ghost was entirely without the gloom that the Academy seems to favor lately; after all, the protagonist was dead for most of the movie, killed by the greed of his closest friend. The contemporary beef with Ghost most likely lies with the simplicity of its relationships. Swayze’s Sam and Demi Moore’s Molly have literally no conflict in their relationship apart from Sam’s inability to say “I love you” to Molly, which director Jerry Zucker goes out of his way to illustrate as cute and charming.

No, these days we have Revolutionary Road and Michael Clayton, and the relationships within our films have to be strained and loveless and irreconcilable. Ghost is an old-fashioned film about teamwork and the ultimate triumph of love and commitment over avarice. It’s fun to guess what the awards circuit might do with Ghost in today’s grim market, but I’d like to think that it might receive the same positive reception for the sheer novelty of its depiction of a loving couple and a petty criminal with a heart of gold.

So that’s what I’m wondering right now. Let’s say Ghost came out on Valentine’s Day 2010. Would you see it at the 2011 Oscars?