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Ire and the Academy
I mentioned to Aet the other day that, while I have never had strong feelings of nationalism, and frankly I don't understand that phenomenon, I cannot deny that I am an American. That I often think like an American. I'm stuck with it. The best I can hope for is to be self-aware, to know when I am committing an Americanism and possibly overcome the more blatant ones. I think I can manage to not be an Ugly American. But I am indisputably an American.
Today's example, boys and girls: With Clinton talking to a brick wall in Syria, India, and Pakistan, and the pope trying to demonstrate - what exactly? - by talking to a stone wall in Israel, with crises and commotions all over the place of far greater lasting significance, what is the only thing I can work up any ire about on this fine spring morning?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
I did not watch the Oscars. I was in the office, playing a computer game, which I felt was a far more constructive use of my time. But I did check in every now and again, and as near as I can tell, the two high points were both courtesy of Messrs. Parker and Stone - their arriving in dresses (Joan Rivers apparently loved it and asked them to twirl for her), and the fact that the staging of "Blame Canada" was far more entertaining than it had a right to be.
Topsy-Turvy got the correct awards. The Matrix got the correct awards. Hilary Swank got the correct award. Everything else was wrong. And I knew it would be wrong. But I'm irate anyway. Primarily because if American Beauty is by any yardstick the best movie of the year, may pink monkeys fly out of my posterior.
We can't reward this movie. Hollywood is notoriously unoriginal. Do you really want to see ten clones of this film over the next two years? It has no point, it has no sympathetic characters, it's depressing as all hell, the underlying messages are actually rather tame and obvious when you peel away the shock-value and rhetoric, and it's got a half-assed script that everyone apparently thinks is the best thing since sliced bread.
Arrrgh!
What happened to movies that were supposed to entertain? The movie was interesting. It was even fascinating - once. It was not, by any definition of the word I know, entertaining. It is not something you would see to give yourself pleasure.
Okay, okay, I just needed to vent this admittedly minor annoyance. Now I can go enjoy the day in good spirits.
Oh, wait, there seems to be one little bit of ire left: Wasn't the Thalberg award supposed to honor lifetime achievement? Doesn't that imply that you've achieved something? Besides making a long string of mediocre movies and sleeping with everyone in Hollywood, I mean?
Why don't they just call it the Career Longevity Award and have done? That way anyone who manages to keep themselves in the public view for a certain number of years automatically gets one and we can drop the pretense that any notion of quality is involved.
For that matter, let's just drop the whole notion of quality entirely and call this what it is: a big beauty pageant with floorshow. At least Cher has always refused to take the thing seriously from day one. She announced a winner last night in a surprisingly demure black dress (whose hemline she was having some trouble with. "Ignore everything going on up here below the waist," she quipped). As she was getting ready to open the envelope, she stopped and said, "Okay, you've probably noticed that I've dressed like a grown-up this year.
"I'd like to apologize to the Academy, and I promise it will never happen again."
© Columbine
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