I don't watch the Oscars on purpose. I actually love movies. I write about them here on this very blog from time to time even, though I admit they tend to be the shiny ones about people wearing body armor with the abs built in. Not exactly the highest of high art as far as film goes, but I'm trying to keep the readership up to at least the low double digits here. I'm sure I have 8,000 words in me about The Power of the Dog, which I liked more than Sam Elliott did, apparently, but the ones you have to think about after you watch them lend themselves to dick jokes and pop-culture callbacks than the ones about the costume people punching each other. Even the artsiest super hero film is, in the spine along which the double-helix of its DNA spins, disposable. Or I guess a better way to say it is: passable. Both experientially and (as a metaphor of course) scatologically. You're meant to ingest, digest and process out, pull your pants up and get back to work. The ones that "transcend" mostly just means you don't mind so much when they're over two hours long.
I used to (fucking COVID) have a ritual where every year, when the award-caliber movies were being squeezed in before the end of the calendar year, I'd make a trip or two to a local art-house* to catch as many of them as I could, usually by myself, usually several in one day. And then I also wouldn't watch the Oscars. It wasn't that I wanted to know who won (I still don't), I just think I want someone to tell me, out of ALL THE STUFF that is out there to consume, which of the things I should bother with. If there's some kind of conversation going around it in the zeitgeist, because something won some obscure prize in Venice or Berlin or Toronto or Park City, I feel like it's worth the effort to feel plugged in, alive, human. If I'm too lazy or sleepy to be well-read, at least I could be cultured with the most passive art-form there is. It does all the words for you!
I'm not against the Oscars as an idea, I suppose, though the point of it is largely confounding, moreso the older I get. I don't have the standard Boomer take about Hollywood giving awards to itself or whatever. And I don't have the slightly homophobic panic where I have to declare out loud that I don't care about the fashion. I actually really like the fashion. I peruse several galleries after the fact to see who wore what. I always love the ones everyone else hates (I thought Kristen Stewart's shorts were fun) and I get excited when the men find a way to not wear a goddamned black tuxedo (which more and more are finding ways to do). I'm not immune to the glamour of it. These are charismatic, beautiful people being featured in a way that maximizes the use of charisma and beauty. It's aspirational in a bourgeois sort of way, like seeing a Lamborghini at the Circle K.
But I cannot. Watch. The. Show. I can't take the inevitable wackness of the presentation. Even the best Oscars telecast is a terrible fucking telecast. It's the only broadcast I know that is actively at war with the only part of it that anybody gives a shit about. Every time they try to make it shorter, they always try to take away from the winners giving speeches. The orchestra is playing over Julia Roberts talking about how her high school guidance counselor changed her life or whatever so... what? So we can fit in more absolutely fucking excruciating "comedy" bits between weirdly-paired duos? Here's Eric Bana and Fortune Feimster doing four minutes of banter about sound design! Thanks, but I've elected to saw my ears off instead. Which is ironic, considering the category.
So I didn't see Will Smith slap Chris Rock. When I saw articles and footage of it start to trickle out, I assumed it was another shitty bit, probably about best documentary (short subject) or something equally relevant. This is where I'm supposed to have an opinion about it now that I know and... boy, I just don't. Seemed bad I guess? I sure wouldn't want to get slapped. So much of the commentary is this racially coded chiding by shocked white people, I don't even want to accidentally wade into it. But besides that: it's a show. People shouldn't get hit in real life, sure, of course I agree with that. But in the middle of the fantasy presentation of Hollywood dress-up day? You've broken the illusion, man! That's not aspirational at all. No one aspires to get slapped in the face. Or if they do, there are specialized websites and apps to facilitate all that.
I've really thought about it and the only thing I think I've really decided here, that I'm absolutely resolved on: I'm definitely not going to watch the Oscars next year either. Even if they let Jada Pinkett shave Chris Rock's head live on camera. I'm not more interested in it now. If anything, I'm less. A fight broke out, sure, but it lasted all of one open-handed slap. There are whole channels where you can watch highly skilled adults do that to each other with closed fists, over and over again, for three minutes at a time, over the course of, like, an hour (or less if one of them knocks the other one out!). I don't need this from my Oscars. I just want to know which which guy decided to "mix it up" by wearing a boring black tux but made of velvet so I can shake my head, click my way through the rest of the slide show and lament that the world isn't filled with more Billy Porters.
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*there are plenty in SoCal, even some with exclusive and rare content, but not so much in my little exurb. There's driving involved, but you do what you need to do to sit in a room with a bunch of 70 year olds to be confuse as a whole about whatever the fuck Wes Anderson is trying to tell us.
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2 comments:
Couldn't agree more, Pops. Awards shows are wince-inducing, head-in-the-hands awful.
If only all this could convince more people of that objective truth, we'd have gained something. But the interest from the outside is just going to encourage more viewership. From the producers' point of view, the best thing that could happen would be similar to the end of "Inglourious Basterds." Everyone would be talking about it!
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