Sunday, March 5, 2006
The Oscars
Hollywood still thinks it's Hollywood — a dream factory; yet somehow, contradictorily, Hollywood thinks it is deeply relevant; Hollywood thinks it leads the world into goodness; the social awareness of good, good people (movie stars) showing us, poor brutes that we are, The Way. That is the self-congratulatory fantasy Hollywood has — but now they don't even make good movies. More than ever, Hollywood is all about money and marketing.
As if to underline the launch of what would be a dreary enterprise, George Clooney, first winner, burbled something or other, then, in a bracing jolt of self-absorbed truth-telling said, “now I won't win for best director”; Clooney continued by telling us how “proud” he was of the socially aware Hollywood community. Since social awareness is what his current movies attempt to convey, he is saying he is proud of himself.
Actually, Hollywood does what it feels it can — it is a mass entertainment industry — and no more. It never led anything, but simply tries to be relevant as the social fabric flutters in the wind. Not an art form, movies are social documents, a collaborative entertainment form reflecting something of the times, of the received notions of the popular culture and its endlessly regurgitated fashions, which Hollywood confuses with ideas and convictions.
This iteration of the annual celebrity fest was particularly lifeless — it felt like a TV awards show. The written introductions to the categories were incomprehensible — they assumed you knew the plot-lines of the movies. Jon Stewart, an ironic, smart East Coast sensibility seemed out of place; he was all right, nevertheless.
One thing becomes more and more evident — there is a celebrity gene pool. Keira Knightly is Winona Ryder. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a young William Hurt. Matthew McConaughey is a young Paul Newman. There are more ringers in the movies than could be attributed to anything other than evolutionary perversity, or the lack of imagination of Hollywood casting and agent flacks.
Well, at least the Oscars gave me some ideas for rentals in our seriously depleted Netflix Queue. We've been watching Footballer's Wives — a sorry English soaper. One of these nominated movies must be better than that rental. Other than that, there were a lot of pretty women, which always brightens the spirit.