I've previously written in two other blogs on more specific topics, but this blog will feature my opining (sounds better than opinions to me) and writing on various topics. It's the closest thing I have so far to a complete compendium of my titular "grand, overarching, overall theory of everything." I should note I came up with this name prior to hearing of the Best Picture nominee about Stephen Hawking. But I like that dude enough to bow to him if he came up with the phrase first. I've been waiting for the right moment to begin this blog for a while. This may not be that moment, but I've grown tired of waiting.
Recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed its nominations for their prestigious awards for 2015. All twenty of the nominees for the four acting categories are, by any definition, white. On top of this, all the Best Director nominees are, arguably, white males (arguably white not male, that's another topic for another day). This has led to a great deal of controversy and the hashtag #oscarssowhite. I've included a link to an article on the issue here. I did not read this article, short as it is, but scanned it, as it deserved. Mortimer would be proud.
I also found an interesting, if incomplete letter to the editor detailing how the odds, minus prejudice, actually predict that once every 14 years we'd have an Oscars without a black nominee. It's been 17. I only fact checked the initial stat that African-Americans make up one eighth of America's population. It is, as said, incomplete, as it only addresses the black portion of the race question and ignores the female one, but it is both interesting and linked here.
Now I'm not here, in this moment, to defend the Academy. The Academy has committed a long series of indefensible acts which I will not try to defend by any means, nor will I try to rank them. I will, however, note the greatest and most absurd snub of this Oscars is actually the failure to nominate The Lego Movie for Best Animated Feature. If you haven't seen it, do. Regardless of age.
My larger point revolves around one of the other most notably snubbed films, the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, Selma. Two African-Americans, one of whom is a woman, form the most notably snubbed parties. I agree in each instance that the artists snubbed surpassed at least one of those nominated. Because I haven't seen every film nominated, I will perhaps unfairly denigrate the one I've seen whose constituent artists are clearly below the bar set by those who created Selma(The Imitation Game).
For Best Actor, David Oyelowo should have been nominated for playing MLK in a deep, subtle, and moving way, exploring all the facets of this complex and complicated man with clarity and courage. Now, I am championing David Oyelowo and I think that minus references to his character, a noted black civil rights leader, you might not have been able to tell what his race was. I'm going to say the obvious thing or what should be the obvious thing. I will say that the man who played the historical personage well-known for saying, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," should not be nominated for any award because of "the color of (his) skin, but (because of) the content of (his performance)."
In my opinion, however, there is no question, comparing only the two films, that Oyelowo deserves the Oscar and the nod over Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game. Cumberbatch's portrayal leaves him somewhat typecast as the 'strange' outsider who doesn't really get along with his peers, but proves brilliant and invaluable in the end. This character should be familiar to anyone who's seen BBC's Sherlock or 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness. Otherwise his performance is good, with amusing bits and heart-wrenching moments, but I think, hardly Oscar-worthy.
I'm going to move on to the director of this film. Beyond the work of the actors, this film came together with such clarity of vision and attention to detail that it opened this historical moment to new eyes like seeing it for the first time. It did so with shocking visual elements which I won't ruin, but simply note: be prepared to be surprised. It is very easy for the historical biopic to be stuffy and dull, but this film exuded brilliance, fire, and living energy in a way that makes Gandhi (a great film worth a watch, by the way) seem dull and pale by comparison. It's the obvious heart-pounding moments of excitement and confrontation and the incisive portrayal of the behind-the-scenes tension.
In comparison, The Imitation Game lacked narrative flow and involved some dull moments, including an intelligent, secretive, shy person divulging, unbidden, his most dear, personal, and dangerous secret to a relative stranger to set up a silly plot device. There is overall very little to justify a Best Director nomination for Morten Tyldum.
A person could read the paragraph on Ava DuVernay and Selma and not know the race or gender of the directer, a thing done by choice. It makes me cry for the future of our nation and world when the conversation about what is good and beautiful and true in our arts is bogged down in questions of race and gender that should have been jettisoned from these conversations long ago.
Now before some people turn off, I'm looking at you American University of Paris friends, I am not suggesting that race and gender are unimportant as concepts or that they shouldn't contribute to any conversations. At least gender is a foundational concept to human discourse. Race, if we substitute something more intellectually meaningful like culture or background, can also be helpful, even in the context of film and other arts. But societally, when we look at who is getting awards and who does the best work, we have to be comfortable with the law of averages saying that sometimes the winners won't be representative. If we want to fight racial, cultural, or gender discrimination, we need to do it positively, by encouraging and supporting the films we see by people of various backgrounds and hope that more Ava DuVernays keep coming, that power, in the form of art and otherwise, continues to be given to the best and never to the whitest, blackest, malest or femalest.
I'd also like to express some real reservation about the prejudices of Academy voting that I think might be real and account for more mistakes than racism. Or even sexism. It is the desire to further causes that one thinks are worth furthering. This goes insane with the Best Documentary Feature category, which went to The Cove in '10, despite its preachy, over-emotional appeals and lack of serious credentials vs. three much more worthy contenders (at least) in Burma VJ, Food Inc., and The Most Dangerous Man in America. In this case, The Imitation Game, which is a decent film about a fascinating individual who saved countless lives and is under-appreciated and deserves to be known. Another interesting tidbit, which at times dominates the film, is that he was gay. And also that he killed himself due to the chemical castration forced on him by the British government.
Let's just get this out of the way. Do I think what they did to that man is horrible and thankless? Yes. Am I glad that they made a major motion picture about him? Yes. Do I think that that film deserves eight Oscar nominations at the expense of Selma? No. Do I think that voters' decisions were affected by the desire to stand up for gay people? Yes. Do I think that anyone had a dinner conversation that included the line, "We've done race at the Oscars, but now is the time to stand up for gay rights"? Yes. Do I have direct documentary evidence of this? No. So here we are. Shame on you, hypothetical Academy voters who are swayed by politics of gender, race, sexual orientation, or any other irrelevant category in your Oscar voting.
Well, I've spouted off and I enjoyed it. Let's do this again sometime. Enjoyez?
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