- Andy Griffith wasn't in the "In Memoriam" tribute (with all of the people who passed away last year).
- Lupe Ontiveros wasn't in the "In Memoriam" tribute.
- Michelle Obama shouldn't have handed out Best Picture.
- Ang Lee shouldn't have won for Best Director while places that do visual effects go bankrupt.
- Seth MacFarlane was racist and sexist and not very funny.
People are also complaining about Seth MacFarlane. He was racist and sexist and irritating. Um... I know these people saw Ted because it got an Oscar nomination, so I also know that they expected MacFarlane to be all of those things. I find him annoying at all times, but I was there for the awards and the stars, not Mr. MacFarlane. (The truth is, everyone trashes the Oscar host. Every single year. And so there was no way MacFarlane could win with this one. Though I prefer my entertainment to be less racist and sexist as a rule.)
Charlize is pissed! |
Turns out, people don't all like the same things.
So, Best Picture is always going to be a film that people can agree on. A likeable, fairly good film, that a majority of people can get behind. Your typical winner is The King's Speech or Chicago or Slumdog Millionaire or Braveheart. None of these films is particularly brilliant. None is particularly heinous. My point is that The Hurt Locker and No Country for Old Men and Silence of the Lambs are outliers. They are the exception not the rule. The rule is Titanic and Forrest Gump and Gladiator.
But I love the Academy Awards. I love them because they make a list of some of the important films that captured the popular year in film. I love them even more because they work like a kind of baseline against which to make our own lists. They draw attention to specific aspects of film. During the Oscars, some friends and I were griping about the film scores that we were nominated. Dayne didn't like any of them except Dario Marianelli's Anna Karenina score, a score I thought was sort of boring. My response was: The best scores of the year are The Master, Skyfall, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lincoln, and Cloud Atlas. These are facts.
I think my point is that what the Oscars do is give us a frame for choosing our own favorites – for sharing these favorites with each other (sometimes heatedly, I will admit), and more importantly, for seeing other movies.
But I don't care if my favorites win the Oscar or not. I am happy when they do, of course; it means all sorts of pay raises and awareness, etc. But a good film is still a good film.
The bad part about this year's Oscars was that there weren't as many films in total nominated as usual. More films and more actors need more attention, and the Academy focuses that attention every year, so they need to spread that love around!
A little perspective. I live in a small city in New Hampshire at the moment, so I don't have much access to films as they come out. I'm catching up on 2012 right now: last night I saw Ann Hui's quiet, beautiful film A Simple Life and a day or two ago I saw a cute Flemish romantic film with two teenage boys called North Sea, Texas and last week I finally got to see Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Kid with a Bike. These films are all pretty excellent, and all got great reviews, but they're not in our multiplexes (they don't come to Hanover NH) and so fewer people see them than see the big bad behemoths like Les Misérables. If we want to talk about the Academy ignoring films or actors or directors, we ought to start with the excellent cinema coming from places around the world that are not the United States. There are some awesome films out there that aren't even on the Academy's radar.
I've started to ramble, but what I want to make sure I say is that the Academy is going to get it wrong. Of course six thousand odd people aren't all going to agree with you. This is a surprise?
I try not to spend time hoping they'll agree with me. I prefer to compare my own tastes to the Academy's. Like I would with any old friend.
The reason I don't like the Oscars is because the whole affair is American-centrique and more about capitalism than about 'art'. And like most American-centrique cultural practices, the Oscars treats itself as Global, when in fact, it is very narrowly concerned with only popular American culture. As you point out, there are plenty of great films that are not even on America's Radar. The films that are nominated or celebrated often have little commercial appeal because they a) Often aren't in English and b) Don't star well-know (English-speaking) Actors. The Oscars are not about celebrating achievement in film, but about showcasing stars and films that have commercial appeal. Even examine the agrandizing names of the Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Sound Editing. Compare those names to the names of the awards of a film festival like Cannes. Cannes drops the word "Best" (at lest in French) and offers awards like "Palme d'Or" a name that doesn't suggest BEST overall in the world, but implies an association with that particular festival and the process and standards upheld by that festival. (Berlin's Film Festival has the image of a Bear, Venice has the Golden Lion) I think that if the world, America in particular, started treating the Oscars for what it is: a superficial star parade with the intent of making someone a lot of money, then I could stand them a bit more. But at the moment, with the prevalent attitude that the awards given to any film actually reflect some kind of achievement overall, I find them not worth my time.
ReplyDeleteYeah. I think my point is that I treat them as a superficial star parade with the intent of making a lot of people a lot of money and of promoting Hollywood cinema in general. This allows me not to hate them.
DeleteIn fact, I often find superficiality quite fun.
I think these are great points, I agree, but people love to complain. There are a lot of grumpy ass peoples in the world and your well-reasoned arguments will probably just give them something else to rail against.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm with you, I had a blast :)