By crowning 'Parasite,' the Oscars try to change the world
No Content for Old Men
with Matt Craig
In this week's newsletter: I'll wrap up the second season of my movie breakdowns with a recap of the Academy Awards ceremony. I want to thank you all so much for reading each week and following along with me all year. Every time I get a response saying you went to go see some movie because of my recommendation or write-up means a lot to me. Here's to an even better season of newsletters in 2020!
Word Count: 888 words
Approximate Reading Time: 6 minutes
The Oscars
One step forward...where will the next two steps go?
The first thing to understand about the Oscars is they are not merit based. That can be a tough pill to swallow if you're a sports fan like me, who dove head first into the world of movies expecting "Hollywood's biggest night" to be comparable to the Super Bowl of the entertainment world. In my mind, the Best Picture was given to the best movie of the year. So just like every blossoming young cinephile, I worked my way through the history of Best Picture winners like a syllabus.
It didn't take long to realize I was sorely mistaken. When's the last time you had a conversation about 2011 winner The Artist? Or recommended to a friend they need to check out 2017 winner The Shape of Water? How did Shakespeare in Love win over Saving Private Ryan in 1999?
Oscar gold is the result of a campaign as grueling and demanding as any political race. Glad-handing, kissing babies, putting out strategic narrative-building information about your movie through the media, slipping some damaging information about the opponents. It's all there. Sometimes the rightful party wins, and often it doesn't.
And as we know from our other election process, these campaigns tend to bring out the worst in voters' inherent biases. In the case of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a body stereotyped accurately as a bunch of rich old white guys, that often means a preference for more reductive and conservative tastes (look no further than the crowd reaction shots during Enimem's performance last night for confirmation).
Despite the stray quote from an anonymous Academy voter that foreign language films like Parasite don't belong amongst the "regular movies," a quote I cannot believe is real in 2020, these preferences are more often subconscious. Art is subjective, and most powerful when it's personal. That's why the far more dangerous narrative is one that says most nominees were white because others hadn't yet earned a seat at the exclusive cool kids table, because movies like The Farewell or performances like Lupita Nyong'o in Us were not "Oscar-y" enough. The status quo has been maintained with that logic in too many other places for far too long.
The facts: zero female directors were nominated (again), the only non-white acting nominee portrayed a slave, and a slate of Best Picture contenders shared a suspiciously similar theme of aging white guys reflecting on their legacies (The Irishman, Ford v. Ferrari, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Marriage Story anyway).
Everyone expected these 2020 movie elections to fit into the same tired narrative. Sam Mendes' 1917 had cleaned up during all of the industry's guild awards -- think of them as the primaries -- by presenting a product that was flashy on the surface and contained essentially zero ideas underneath. It was the least offensive movie to the most amount of people, and therefore, was a massive favorite.
Then Parasite happened. It became the first Korean film to be nominated for Best International Feature, and won. Bong Joon Ho upset the entrenched titans of the industry like Tarintino and Scorcese to win Best Original Screenplay and Best Director. Then, in the coup de grâce, it became the first foreign language movie to win Best Picture.
An Oscars stage packed with dozens of Asian actors, filmmakers and producers felt like a truly monumental moment in the movie industry, perhaps even American culture at large. Unanimous celebration followed, even from yours truly, who has not witnessed his personal favorite and best movie of the year take home the top prize in a long time.
But to celebrate the socially progressive Parasite win, or get outraged about other injustices is to validate the importance of the Academy Awards. Which I'm not sure is warranted. A bunch of golden statues given out to people who make mass entertainment for a living doesn't matter, nor does it change the world, no matter how many speeches about the power of art are given to a room of artists seeking their own validation.
The Academy Awards is in reality nothing more than a barometer of Hollywood naval gazing. Let us not forget, even a Parasite win was achieved by its campaign and not its merits (the fact that it deserved it is merely coincidence). The movie was no doubt boosted by an aspirational wokeness within the industry, and perhaps an even more aspirational rebellion against our current political moment (vocalized by presenters throughout the night). That's all well and good, but last year Roma had all the same narratives propelling it toward the top prize and then got denied because, reportedly, Academy voters didn't want to reward digital-first distributor Netflix.
The healthier, and I'd argue more fulfilling, way to consume the Oscars is as a celebration of the year in movies. Storytelling is powerful, and movies entertain us and inspire us thanks to the hard work of thousands of artists and artisans.
A Parasite win won't change the world, but it could help change the industry. Next year and the year after, we might get different, fresher, more diverse movies. And that's great news if you're a fan of great storytelling.
I can't wait to see what the 2021 Oscar race holds! Talk to ya then!