Like any annual celebration, the Oscars come with a few
traditions: the bitter, media-fueled rivalry between two Best Picture
contenders, minor political controversies blown way out of proportion, Armond
White insulting someone at the New York Film Critics Circle dinner, think
pieces contemplating how the Academy has lost
touch with the public and/or reality, and so on. But perhaps the most
obnoxious of these rituals is the inevitable surfacing of awards misanthropes –
you know, those people who proudly proclaim (usually via the Internet) that the
Oscars are meaningless and self-congratulatory and they don’t care, so anyone who does is clearly an idiot. Isn’t it
just another excuse for a bunch of rich celebrities to pat themselves on the
back?
It’s not like the Super Bowl is some earth-shattering event,
yet you never hear football fans derided for their choice in entertainment.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about the Oscars. On one
hand, it can be frustrating and disillusioning to know that the whole thing
basically amounts to an expensive, over-hyped P.R. stunt that stretches from
one February to the next, and with all the speculation preceding the actual
awards, the winners are rarely all that surprising. But every year, I still
find myself getting genuinely excited to watch the tacky-glamorous ceremony, to
see who gives the best speech, who accidentally lets loose an F-bomb on network
TV, who wears the dress I most wish I could afford, etc.
It’s easy to get caught up in the
madness that accompanies awards season. Everyone likes to see their favorites
triumph and perhaps their least favorites stumble (I don’t see the point in
such negativity, but whatever floats your boat). There’s also something weirdly
thrilling about witnessing the race unfold – the narratives, the backroom
strategizing, the scandals, the whispered
attacks and counterattacks, the subtle shifts in momentum. Part of it is
narcissistic: I like being in-the-know, at least more so than the majority of
people who think about the Oscars maybe once a year, if even, and are
blissfully oblivious to the existence of precursors and Harvey Weinstein. Even
with the constant media attention it receives, Hollywood remains shrouded in
secrecy; we outsiders know precious little of what really goes on behind the
scenes. It’s an industry rampant with as much gossip and political intrigue as,
well, actual politics (or, if you prefer, an episode of Game of Thrones), and if that doesn’t make your brain giddy with
curiosity, you’re probably more sane than I am.
I liked Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle, but Lupita Nyong’o should be sweeping these
things.
Truth be told, I haven’t gotten worked up over anything
awards-related since Christopher Nolan failed to snag a Best Director
nomination for Inception back in
2011. While there’s nothing strictly wrong with being passionate about the
Oscars (after all, there are some people who get paid to follow, analyze and predict them), it’s a lot more fun if
you don’t take them very seriously, and at the end of the day, it’s a waste of
time and energy to get outraged about something this insubstantial. For all
their superficiality and self-indulgence, though, awards aren’t completely
pointless. In fact, along with providing the public with entertainment and a
glimpse into the inner workings of Hollywood, they serve a few functions that
make them vital to the film industry.
To
begin with, the Oscars can
draw attention to films that might otherwise be forgotten and lost to time.
Especially in recent years, they’ve proven willing to recognize more obscure
work, handing Best Picture nominations to lauded yet hardly mainstream indies
like Winter’s Bone and Precious and last year famously snubbing
celebrated filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck for Best Director
consideration in favor of newcomer Behn Zeitlin and Austrian auteur Michael
Haneke. For these movies, it’s often seen as an honor just to be nominated. Even
then, they have to rely on strong critical word-of-mouth and media publicity
much more heavily than, say, anything with the name Steven Spielberg attached,
but it still allows them to reach a wider audience that would probably have
eluded them otherwise. When Slumdog
Millionaire, The Hurt Locker and The Artist won Best Picture in their respective
years, the precursors had robbed the Oscars of their suspense, so it’s easy to
overlook exactly how unlikely those movies’ successes were. A rags-to-riches
fairytale set in modern-day India (albeit made by British filmmakers), a
gritty, unsensational Iraq War thriller directed by a woman known mostly for
campy action flicks, and a black-and-white silent French movie, none with a
single A-list name among the cast? Not quite stereotypical Oscar-bait.
Irrespective of your personal opinion of these films, it’s nice that they and
others like them have been noticed.
For the love of great acting, will somebody give her a
real leading role?
Relatedly, it’s questionable
whether certain movies would even get made
without the Oscars. A common complaint among awards misanthropes is that
instead of rewarding great cinema (whatever that means) or establishing future
classics (which is impossible since no one can predict what movies will still
resonate with us in 20 or 40 years), the Oscars simply lavish praise on
mediocrity. Terms like “Oscar-bait”
and “middlebrow” are widely used as pejoratives, the former shorthand for
prestigious, star-studded dramas produced for the sole purpose of attracting
awards buzz and the latter referring to films neither commercial-minded enough
to count as blockbusters nor quiet enough to be “true” art house fare. The
words themselves aren’t the problem so much as the way they’re employed,
typically said with an air of disdain. At a time when Hollywood increasingly
depends on superhero franchises and action spectacles to make money, we should
be glad that films like The King’s Speech
and Lincoln exist at all. If not for
the distinction and added publicity that come with awards, studios would
have no incentive to take a risk on character-driven adult dramas.
And
lastly but most importantly, Oscar season is a time to celebrate movies and the
people that make them – a time when you can use words like “cinematography” and
“art direction” and only sort of sound like a pretentious douchebag. I still
wax nostalgic about 2010, the year when not only were the Best Picture nominees
all at least decent movies (not a Blind
Side or Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close in sight!), but also when people actually saw and talked about them.
Of course, it helped that two of the nominees were legitimate
blockbusters, but even something like True
Grit managed to find an audience, despite belonging to a genre long
considered passé. It was a year refreshingly absent of the cynical snark we
usually see, unless you count the rather halfhearted Social Network vs. King’s
Speech debate; everyone generally seemed to just like the movies.
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