Closed-mindedness isn’t Oscar-worthy

Dear Oscar,

Allow me to preface this by saying your name is embarrassing. For such a prestigious honor your title represents, “Oscar” does nothing to jostle the loins. Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch may well be the only other celebrity who matters with the name “Oscar.” Believe me, your recent grouchiness is challenging that of the notorious puppet.

I write the following plea with distaste. In years past your name, the alternative label to an Academy Award, used to represent carefully chosen excellence. Nine times out of ten, the proper five movies were chosen for the race to Best Picture. Of those five, at least three warranted the acclaim. That’s usually how things went and for the most part, I was cool with it.

Not anymore.

My newly blossomed abhorrence to the way you go about picking your poison began with “The Dark Knight” scandal last year. Rather than reward the flying rodent - a movie firmly set to stand the test of time as one of the defining movies of the past decade -  you decided to go artsy fartsy (per usual) and nominate “The Reader” for the top prize, a snoozer about a steamy affair between a 15-year-old boy and Kate Winslet as a former Nazi in post-WWII Germany. From what I can recall, the cinematography was appropriately soggy and Kate The Great‘s breasts (sans bra support) made their fifth appearance on screen. 

 “Wall-E,” an ode to classic silent films with a real gem of a  love story, deserved recognition just as much as Batman did. But honoring a comic book character and a cartoon would have been too much for the esteemed geezers of the film industry. It just wasn’t a classy decision.  Negative bias towards animated features ended with the surprising inclusion of “Beauty and the Beast” to contend for Best Picture in 1991 but competition was weak that year. Only period pieces, sweeping romances, dull dramas and syrupy message movies appropriately represent the Academy. How else to explain greater love for “Chariots of Fire” than “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Gandhi‘s” win over “E.T.,” “Forrest Gump” instead of “Pulp Fiction,” “Fargo” losing to “The English Patient” and “A Beautiful Mind” emerging victorious  in place of a film with an actual pulse, “Moulin Rouge!”

Once in a blue moon, you pull one mother of a charley horse.  “Annie Hall” does not trump “Star Wars.” “Ordinary People” looks ordinary compared to “Raging Bull.” Neither of the two previous misdemeanors matched the felonies committed during the last 12 years. The only reasonable explanation for shutting “Saving Private Ryan” out of the big win in 1999 would have to be a widespread use of psychotropic drugs. The elite club of snobs chose “Shakespeare in Love” instead. Yawn.

At the 2006 ceremony, you actually managed to one-up the “Ryan” fallacy, my dear Oscar.  It was the year of “Brokeback Mountain.” Ah, the acclaim, the controversy, the snickers. Here’s the cold, hard truth; “Brokeback” cleared all the precursor awards, positioning itself for the big kahuna. Such a triumph would have been a  milestone.  Jack Nicholson announced the outcome. “And the Oscar goes to…’Crash’…whoa.” Yeah Jack, more like, “WTF?!” The writing was written on the wall. A herd of homophobic conservatives in our beloved Academy voted not for “Crash” to win, but for “Brokeback” to lose. Later, insiders learned many members refused to watch DVD screeners of the film entirely. 

Discrimination isn’t special or exclusive and, Oscar, you claim to be both adjectives.
Winning that gold statuette of yours is a whole heck of a lot like winning a presidential election. To be nominated, actors have to constantly campaign, kiss ass and prove to their peers they deserve a spot amongst royalty. We’re talking about an enterprise that’s as much a popularity contest and crock of shit as prom king and queen. Mostly, beauty rules supreme. Sixty-two-year-old Helen Mirren only won Best Actress three years ago for “The Queen” because she played a real person (Queen Elizabeth II), an  acting feat you voters have wet dreams over. And the dame is a babe on the red carpet.

Oscar, I don’t like what you’ve become. I didn’t like your Band-Aid-over-a-bullet-wound approach in making up for the “Dark Knight” snub by nominating ten films this year instead of the traditional five, an idea devoid of logic. Then, reminding us on Sunday, Mar. 7 this year’s David vs. Goliath Best Picture battle - the little-“Hurt Locker”-that-could against the blue box office whale, “Avatar” - would end with business as usual. Of course “Avatar” wouldn’t win. It’s science fiction. It’s 70 percent special effects. It’s the greatest show on Earth. And motion capture, in the book of the uninformed, isn’t acting. To many, the right film won out of the bunch. That’s not the point. The best film of any given year almost never wins Best Picture. My favorite movie of 2006, “Children of Men,” wasn’t even nominated. Pixar’s “Up,” the most critically acclaimed movie of last year, only got in because of the expansion to ten nominees.

Recognizing something as abstract as a film’s quality, or comparing the strengths of  two frontrunners like “Avatar” and “Locker,” truly is irrelevant. By default, tradition overcomes innovation. To receive an Oscar is to fall victim to a consistently stubborn approach that rejects anything outside the ideology of a bunch of old fogies.  Quite frankly, it sickens me.
As Peter Finch famously proclaimed in “Network,” “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Sincerely,

A disappointed movie buff.

Greg O’Neil can be contacted at goneil@keeneequinox.com.