“No, no soap Mr. Norton. We’re sunk, and we’ll have to pay
through the nose.” I had actually misremembered this passage of dialogue,
uttered by Edward G. Robinson in 1944’s “Double Indemnity” as “It won’t wash.”
And the reason I was thinking of “It won’t wash” was on account of Sean Penn’s
joke before announcing the “Birdman” Best Picture award. I don’t need to repeat it here. And the
reason “It won’t wash” sprang to mind, inaccurately, is because, you know, no
matter how many protestations of collegial teasing between longtime friends and
colleagues and blah blah blah are offered, they won’t wash. Some things are not
to be joked about, and Alejandro G. Iñarritu’s green card is not one of them.
Alan Yuhas’ roundup in the Guardian is pretty comprehensive, and I’ve got to say my favorite cited tweet is from Nina
Terrero, an Entertainment Weekly reporter who took this firm stand: “I will never
pay to see any of [Sean Penn’s] films again.” Whoa.
Here’s a thing: if you work at Entertainment Weekly, you
probably don’t pay to see Sean Penn’s films to begin with. I have to tread
carefully here, obviously. I don’t want to put myself in the line of fire of
racial outrage, but let’s have a little entertainment journalism REAL TALK
here, people: if you’re reading a film review or a profile or what have you,
you’re reading an account written by someone who doesn’t pay to see movies that
often. And honestly, the algebra of how much of my actual money goes into Sean
Penn’s pocket in the event that I DO actually pay to see a Sean Penn film is
pretty complicated and, oh forget it. I got into this argument over Roman
Polanski once and it didn’t change the world for the better either.
Anyway. How did YOU like the Oscars last night? As I
explained in my first installment of this series of writings, I, like perhaps
many of you, enjoy the whole awards season thing when awards go out to movies I
like. So while I wish that “Boyhood” had gotten more, I was pleased to see
Patricia Arquette win Best Supporting Actress and I was not displeased to see
“Birdman” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” do as well as they did. I wish that
“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” had won Best Animated Feature, but I wasn’t
counting on it to do so, and I’m not against “Big Hero 6.” I refuse to be
indignant. I made chicken parmiagiana for the Oscar party My Lovely Wife and I
were invited to, and it went over well. I did not call my parents at J.K.
Simmons’ insistence, only because I’ve been talking to them a lot lately,
particularly my mom, who had serious surgery a couple of weeks ago and who has
been recovering so spectacularly that she was able to watch the Oscars with a
group at her rehabilitation facility. I thought a lot of host Neil Patrick
Harris’ bits fell flat—on a show where viewers always bitch about length, it’s
not really a great idea to include a comedy routine predicated on eating up a
good portion of what is supposed to be the ceremony’s home stretch, as was the
case with the “predictions” gag—I found him likable and capable and would like
to see him return—grow into the role a little. So I’ve nothing to complain
about.
But of course I’ve got nothing to complain about because I’m
a white heterosexual male baby boomer. I am apparently ubiquitously represented
by the Academy. Never mind that I never actually see people who remind me of
myself in motion pictures, nor have I ever been interested in motion pictures
as a vehicle for seeing people such as myself. I was raised on horror movies
and was always more interested in film as Spiritually Transcendent Narcotic
than as Comforting Identification Medium. But that’s just me, and as a white
heterosexual person, my privilege is such that my professed aesthetic elasticity
is practically built into it.
Which is one way of saying I don’t know what to say about
the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag besides, well, yes, it is, and…Well, here, let me
point to THAT white guy over there, Scott Feinberg, who probably inadvertently
poured fuel on that rhetorical fire by publishing, in The
Hollywood Reporter, not one but two “brutally honest” interviews with
Academy members/Oscar balloteers who betrayed really startlingly condescending
views on race; “we give out awards to black people when they deserve them, just
like any other group,” one member commented, as if African-Americans were some
kind of alien bloc outside the Academy proper. It’s nauseating, and the
defensiveness behind the sentiment is nauseating. As if to say, “Why are you
people of color beating up on me
about this? You’ll be recognized by me when you earn it.” But this
defensiveness gets old before it’s even articulated, really. Poor White
Person. Once again some movie dialogue
comes to mind, specifically Alec Baldwin in “Glengarry Glen Ross:” “You think
this is abuse? You think this is abuse you c**ksucker? You can’t take this, how
can you take the abuse you get on a sit?”
Because here’s the thing, people: Social Justice Oscars
aren’t going away. This isn’t 1993, when Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins were
chastised over forthright comments on Haiti, and Richard Gere was out-and-out
banned from the show for criticizing the Chinese government (Tibet, Buddhists,
you know). A new and very social-media-vocal generation of Oscar aficionados is
watching and not only does it vociferously applaud political and social-issue
pronouncements, it parses them with a fine-toothed comb (is that a mixed
metaphor? To tell you the truth, in all this excitement it’s kinda hard to make
the distinction), which is why the “Right On!” effect of Patricia Arquette’s
acceptance speech (bolstered by the Sisterhood-Is-Powerful reaction shot of
Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez) was very soon ameliorated by the “WHAT did she
say about the gays?” disapproval chorus.
Anyway, I’m not trying to go all Jonathan Chait on you here,
I know it’s all just words, but oh my, such an awful lot of them, and such a
lot of angry people behind them. I keep imagining Bob Hope in one of his
coward-persona characters, caught in a spotlight, looking for the quickest
exit. In conclusion, two song lyrics. First one’s by Irving Berlin, and
originated in the 1946 musical “Annie Get Your Gun:”
“There’s no people like show people
They smile when they are low
Even with a turkey that you know will fold
You may be stranded out in the cold
Still you wouldn’t trade it for a sack o’ gold
Let’s go on with the show”
Second one’s from a song called “Gloria Gloom,” written by
Bill MacCormack and Robert Wyatt, first performed by the band Matching Mole in
1972:
“Like so many of you
I’ve got my doubts about how much to contribute
To the already rich among us.
How long can I pretend that music’s more relevant than
fighting
For a socialist world?”
Whuzzup, people.
