Oscar Commentary: Why the Academy Got it Wrong
by Mark Canavera on March 16, 2006 in Culture
I’m not going to review a film this week. My reviews of newly released films will continue in next issue. Today, we need to discuss the way in which this years Oscars failed us all.
At first, anyway, it seemed like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was ready to make a statement. The Academy Award nominations were announced on January 31, and each of the candidates for Best Picture touched on a hot topic with political undertones.
While “Capote” asked viewers to consider how far journalists should go to get their story, “Good Night and Good Luck” explored the role of the media in informing public opinion in McCarthy-era America. Muddled or not, “Munich” did not shy away from the explosiveness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the two front runners, “Crash” and “Brokeback Mountain” took on race relations in Los Angeles and homosexuality in middle America, respectively.
A quick glance tells us that these are not movies for the politically disengaged.
But the Academy had backed off from its earlier edginess. By the time “Crash” garnered the Best Picture award in the fourth hour of the show, it was perfectly clear that the Academy had taken the easy route.
In essence, the Academy chose the movie whose win might ruffle a few Hollywood feathers while sending a subtle but clear message to the American public: “Rest easy. We won’t make you think too hard.”
Of the five nominees, “Crash” was the only one that let its viewers off the hook. Rather than probing race relations, one of the richest topics conceivable for an American film, “Crash” merely splashes a pastiche of stereotypes onto the screen and then ends, abruptly and prematurely. The film grants its viewers the self-satisfaction of having thought about race without having to do the hard work of wrestling with racism.
In Kennedy School leadership terms, the filmmakers responsible for “Crash” manifested work avoidance. But so, I would say, did the Academy, passing up four opportunities to hand some work over to the American public.
Any of the other four movies would have sufficed for this purpose.
“Brokeback Mountain,” my personal favorite, pushed viewers to reconceptualize and expand the meaning of love. “Munich” asked us to consider the potential justifications for violence. “Good Night and Good Luck” pushed us to clarify the boundary between news and entertainment, and “Capote” begged us to determine how much we think a good story is worth.
And “Crash”? Well, “Crash” told us that there’s a heck of a lot of racism in L.A.
Most of my friends who like “Crash” tell me they like it because it represents racial realities. While recognizing that “Crash” at least ropes the topic of race relations back into the arena, I would respond, “So what?” Great movies do not merely represent. They transform.
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