We are all
prostitutes.

The politically-enraged post-punk outfit The Pop Group
hurled that accusation our way back in the late ‘70s.

The [Academy
Awards]’s notorious commercialism and hypocrisy disgust many of the millions
and millions and millions of viewers who tune in during prime time to watch the
presentation…We pretty much all tune in, despite the grotesquerie of watching
an industry congratulate itself on the pretense that it’s still an art form, of
hearing people in $5,000 gowns invoke lush clichés of surprise and humility
scripted by publicists, etc.—the whole cynical post-modern deal—but we all
still seem to watch. To care. Even though the hypocrisy hurts…

David Foster Wallace wrote that back in 1998. (And nowadays
the gowns go for way more than $5,000.) As I prepared to watch the Golden Globes
show last night, these were the citations that were swirling through my brain.
And nevertheless. Not only did I enjoy not just laughing at but laughing with the
ceremony (the material that hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler delivered had a
60:40 ratio of razor-sharp to cringe worthy, actually a pretty damn good number
all things being equal), I went to bed with a feeling of contentment.

The reason is idiotically, even arguably venally, simple. In
the categories I cared about, my guys won. Multiple awards for “Boyhood,” the
number three film on my 2014 Top Ten List. Multiple awards for “Birdman,”
number seven on my list. A mildly surprising award for “The Grand Budapest
Hotel,” my number four. No, I’m not high on “Whiplash,” but I love J.K. Simmons
when he’s directed by the Coens or appearing on a “Law and Order” or doing a
Farmer’s Insurance commercial or anything else. And truth to tell he’s
enjoyable to watch even in so meretricious an effort as “Whiplash.” Yeah, I
think “The Theory of Everything” is a crock (I do like how its standard
deviation from the Great Man With Disability biopic is its acknowledgement that
Marital Infidelity Is A Thing) and I think Eddie Redmayne’s performance, while
virtuosic, is rather shameless in its telegraphing—still, Redmayne’s win,
combined with Julianne Moore’s victory with “Still Alice,” set off a social
media semi-frenzy of gifs from the incestuous Redmayne/Moore threesome (with
Hugh Dancy) from 2007’s “Savage Grace,” so that’s
something, particularly if you’re into indulging the more adolescent side of
your sense of humor. So even when I wasn’t entirely happy, I discerned nothing
to get angry about. It’s kind of like how, despite the fact that I found the
Ronald Reagan administration morally and politically objectionable, I really
have to force myself to work up any indignation about it, because the fact is
that Ronnie and his doings really didn’t do all that much to inhibit my
enjoyment of my twenties. Does that make me a shallow person? Maybe.

But there’s something to be said, if not for shallowness,
then for the ability to relax into the climaxes of awards season rather than
stress about what the Globe results mean for the narrative. This, I suppose,
will be the task of all manner of self-appointed “gurus,” self-proclaimed reluctant
prognosticators, ostensibly dispassionate industry analysts, and many more as
various Guild and non-Guild awards ceremonies disperse various and sundry tea
leaves prior to the big night less than eight weeks from now—The Oscars. The
showbiz pundits whose job it is to predict sure things and/or front-runners
might normally be flummoxed by the way the movie awards at the Globes were
fanned out. The generosity itself was sufficient to make one suspect it was
deliberate, for the sake of an entertaining show: a little love for “Serious
Indie One,” a little for “Serious Indie Two with Movie Stars In The Cast,” a
little love for “Comedic Quirky Indie”…okay, so, trending: “No Love For
Blockbusters, and, Surprisingly or Perhaps Disturbingly, Little Love For
Socially Conscious Drama.”

I did see in my Twitter feed several complaints about the
paucity of awards for “Selma” and I do suppose its reason for pause, or
question. The film is a fine one (number six on my 2014 ten best list!), so
what’s the holdup? Did it get in the race too late? Was the notoriously shady
Hollywood Foreign Press Association bought off by the Lyndon Baines Johnson
Presidential Library lobby? Out there in the Oscar blogosphere you will find
all manner of predictors talking of insect antennae and metrics that are too
inside baseball for you, the puny human reader who does not live in West
Hollywood, to understand. One thing to remember as you navigate the personal
passions that roil under the surface of “trust me, I’m an industry veteran”
chin-strokings (there may someday come a day when Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone
gets over the fact that David Fincher has not won a Best Director Oscar) it’s
useful to remember that even those of us who rail most vehemently about the
absurd corruption of an industry that gives Jennifer Aniston a Best Actress
Nomination (and that, as of 10:00 in the morning Eastern Time on January 12,
2015, is all she’s got with respect to awards) are functioning, in some sense,
as adjuncts and/or accomplices of that industry. But hey. There’s a reason it’s
called “show business.” And sometimes in show business, good things happen to
and with art, and we saw some of that happen at last night’s Globes. 

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here.

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