And the Oscar Goes To…the Academy
Over the last weekend, the Academy threw an another annual shindig in Hollywood, trying to reinvent it a little. This year it was the color of the carpet, that went from red to beige, looking like a magnet for all sorts of dirt which, as expected,did happen in the end. The 95th Oscars were hosted by an unusually restrained Jimmy Kimmel who managed to keep away from his boring political tirades. Either there was no alternative option or he just seemed the safest bet. Whichever it was, it made you miss Steve Martin or Whoopi Goldberg. The viewers were spared of fist fights because the show is off limits for Will Smith for the forseeable future. Though the absence of violence turned the experience tiresome and predictable. Not just because it’s as excrutiating as The Passion of Christ.
Women were wearing dresses that would make using a restroom into a wardrobe malfunction. So if there was a need they might as well pee right into their seat at the Dolby Theatre. Celebrity stylists are sadists that don’t consider any sort of practicalities in their creations and still charge their clients a hefty sum to look good. If that ain’t a rip-off I don’t know what is. Other than a nomination, the only thing that would lure me to get into a tux and pop over are the fancy gift bags loaded with expensive shit, this year more than 100,000 dollars worth of it. Brands compete to get their products into the fabled bags, and I certainly don’t mind a gift card for a deluxe spa treatment or a t-bone steak. Here everything is free for the privileged few.
This year, Daniel Kwan’s Everything, Everywhere, All at Once swept the floor with a handful of the main awards including best film, directing, supporting roles and the first ever Asian actress awarded for a leading role. Michelle Yeoh has been a staple in Hollywood for a while now, and with a tidal wave of previous awards for her role as Evelyn Wang, the owner of the failing laundromat, the Oscar wasn’t that much of a surprise. While the quirky film certainly had its delights like Jamie Lee Curtis who was awarded for her role as a bizarre tax auditor, it speaks of something broader that’s been going on for years in the American film industry right now and it’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore: representation.
What’s more, the Academy has come up with a detailed checklist of criteria your film needs fulfill in order to be eligible for its highest honor. It includes everything from scripts, leading and supporting characters to particular minorities. I can almost hear Joseph McCarthy spinning in his grave with an “I told you so” grin on his face. We have arrived at a point where everyone is so afraid of each other that all the bridges are burning, just to prevent potential damage should someone cross them to actually engage in a creative disagreement. It turned Twitter into a career graveyard for those unwilling to bend over backwards like a prison bitch and dance to the tune of propaganda that’s using cinemas as political pulpits.
The Oscar winning actor Tom Hanks now regrets playing gay characters in important movies like Philadelphia because he himself isn’t gay. Please shoot me. Do you need to be disabled to play Stephen Hawking? Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar for it. The way things are going, you’ll need a permit from black Jamaicans to wear dreadlocks. Yet many non-Jamaican blacks do it without being reproached for cultural appropriation. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. In the constant efforts to re-wire and re-educate ourselves we’ve had to familiarize ourselves with a whole code of prohibition that even managed to find rotten apples among emojis. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one for that too.
Our children have intellectually deteriorated so much that they’re using emojis in their sentences instead of full stops and exclamation marks. Soon they’ll be putting an X instead of a signiture on paperwork and documents. Or a fucking emoji. They’re growing into cofused, disoriented individuals that keep their opinions to themselves to avoid getting into trouble in case there’s a snowflake who can’t handle having their little feelings hurt. It’s not the first time that they decide to award a particular minority group that just happens to have a decent movie. This time it’s the Asians. More than anything else, it’s a self-congratulatory autofellatio saying “we see you, we won’t kick you out so don’t feel bad about stealing the cutlery.”
In 2002, it was African-Americans, when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry scooped up the leading acting awards. It was supposed to be the dawn of a new age of inclusivity, to such an extent that Halle Berry exclaimed “this door tonight has been opened”. Oh, Halle, poor naive Halle. It’s 2023, and we’re still waiting for an another leading acting Oscar for a black actress. I don’t remember seeing Monsters’ Ball and by popular opinion it seems I haven’t missed out on much either. It’s just the Academy that had decided to tick the black box off and be done with it. Who knows when we’ll see an another Michelle Yeoh giving an acceptance speech at the Dolby. I wouldn’t suggest holding your breath, you’ll choke to death.
There were examples when an outsider minority film managed to squeeze its way through the cracks to snatch the best picture and best director award, like Bong Joon Ho’s 2019 film Parasite. It was the first time in Academy’s history for a foreign film to win both best and best international. So this year again, we’ve added to the never ending catalogue of embarassing quotes and speeches, yet the grand comeback of Brendan Fraser, winning an Oscar for The Whale, made it all worth the fuss. Clearly, it was designed as the perfect bait: a tearjerker story, fatsuit, an important topic and a suffering hero. All the ingredients were there, and they delivered the desired effect. which for once I don’t mind.
Berry is hardly surprised by what’s happening though she initially expected for her historic win to translate to increased box office value as well. Instead, she wound up with movies like Catwoman. It was as bad as Cats, just imagine Judi Dench and James Corden in shiny leather harness instead. That’s the irony of success in the movie industry for people of color: there are indeed a few spotlights for them, but when it comes to Oscars, it’s just an another statuette for their mantelpiece. If we were indeed to follow through with the new principle of actors sticking to their own communities instead of, you know, acting, Hollywood would end up in ruins. Because there’s only so many minority-celebrating films I can handle before I go back to High Fidelity.
In that case, the only thing that will save their ratings from plummeting further might be a mass hysteria if Will Smith breaks the restraining order and turns the glitzy soiree into a crime scene with the help of a few thugs. Essentially, Hollywood is a place of illusions. Don’t be fooled if the Academy honors your work with an award: they’re just back-patting themselves for doing the right thing for snubbed minorities.
If you’re there to do serious business instead of waiting tables for celebrities, you’ll have too loosen your morals up a bit. I don’t care what those people had to do before they got their shot at the golden apple. If your career doesn’t take off right away, don’t cry wolf when you go back into the lion’s den and get bitten again. Only in this dream factory do you get a guaranteed happy ending. Life isn’t that romantic, but we need movies to believe that sometimes that dream it’s not as far-fetched as it seems. And at least for me, that’s more than enough.
