The 82nd Annual Academy Awards: Hollywood celebrates itself, undeservedly [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

What stood out most glaringly about the ceremony was the extent to which the realities of life faced by...millions...were absent, both in the films honored (with few exceptions) and the program itself. The world and the country are gripped by the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression...two neo-colonial wars...the US seethes with social frustration and discontent, and yet none of this found the slightest expression in last night’s broadcast.

The...comic patter of co-hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin set the tone for the evening. Even the tepid “topical” humor of recent years was eliminated. Not a single reference was made to an event or individual outside Hollywood’s inner circles...

...more intelligent works — A Serious Man, A Single Man and Up In The Air — went entirely unrecognized while the most confused, banal, and in some cases downright filthy (Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, praised by presenter John Travolta for its “rewriting” of history), fared quite well...

...the academy bestowed the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing on The Hurt Locker...the story of a US Army bomb squad serving in Iraq, the film is said to be an “apolitical” or “neutral” movie about the war...

Bigelow, Boal and company have created an abstract portrait of courage and “sacrifice,” which could be done in the case of any military force, including Hitler’s Wehrmacht, a portrait whose net effect is to encourage dangerous illusions in the US armed forces and their mission.

In accepting the awards... Bigelow, said, “I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men of the military who risk their lives every day in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world. May they come home safe.”

She added later, “They are there for us, and we are there for them.”

At this point in history, with vast numbers of Iraqis dead, a country destroyed by US brutality and recklessness, such comments are thoroughly reprehensible.

The Academy did a disservice to its viewers...and its younger viewers in particular, in eliminating the honorary Oscars and lifetime achievement awards from its broadcast. These awards...were handed out at an earlier ceremony that was not televised.

Receiving honorary Oscars this year were actress Lauren Bacall, star of such remarkable films as To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Written on the Wind; and Gordon Willis, the cinematographer behind such films as The Godfather, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and All The President’s Men.

Both Bacall and Willis, it should be noted, gave us far more substantial works than those being celebrated on the stage during Sunday night’s broadcast. In a healthier cultural climate, the Academy would have considered it a duty to encourage younger viewers to seek out the best works of an earlier period.

For now, Hollywood carries on as it has for some time, in a dismal state. A breath of fresh air is sorely needed. We have no doubt that important changes will occur. The social eruption that the present economic crisis is preparing will produce vast changes in artistic and cultural life. New moods will be introduced and new artists will emerge. Some of those currently at work will be reinvigorated. Many of those now celebrated will become irrelevant. This is all long overdue.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/acad-m09.shtml