Posted on 01/22/2019 3:53:06 PM PST by EdnaMode
Each year at the Left Coast crack of dawn, when the Oscar nominations are announced, theres generally at least one major nomination many pundits were predicting that fails to materialize. When that happens, entertainment media tends to rise up as one and say the s-word: snub. In truth, its not usually a snub; its just somebody getting passed over for other nominees who were loved a little more than the conventional wisdom realized. Thats why the chatter about it tends to get worn out by the end of the day.
But when the nominations were announced this morning, and it was revealed that Bradley Cooper had failed to get a best director nod for A Star Is Born, my feeling was: This may or may not have been a snub, but it was emblematic. It signified something arguably major in terms of what the Oscars are becoming.
I leave it to the movie gods, and the gossip columnists, to debate how much Bradley Cooper is personally liked or disliked in Hollywood. But his omission from the best director roster didnt happen in a vacuum. It crystallized the slow but steady fade of A Star Is Born, over the last month or two, from Oscar slam-dunk to solid-but-hardly-sure-fire Oscar front-runner to middle-of-the-road Oscar contender to hanging-on-by-its-fingernails Oscar movie thats still sort of in the game to the place it now holds: Oscar toast. And that, in a way, is a much bigger story than the issue of whether Bradley Cooper came off as too serious and self-involved over the course of awards season, especially in a certain much-talked-about newspaper-of-record magazine profile.
The gradual decline of A Star Is Born during awards season has been, for those of us who love the film, a somewhat depressing spectacle to watch. But now that the decline is more or less complete, I think its meaning has at last become clear. A Star Is Born was, and is, a rapturous knockout of a romantic melodrama (its not as if Im alone in seeing it that way), but its a movie thats completely and utterly bereft of a social message. In 2018, that makes it seem (dare I say it?) more trivial than the other contenders. Its just a love story. And though its a very grand love story, and was an extraordinarily huge hit, these days that isnt enough.
Just look at this years eight best picture contenders: Black Panther (a one-film revolution, and long overdue: the first epically scaled African-American superhero movie), BlacKkKlansman (a racial police drama of searing relevance), The Favourite (a costume drama of intense post-#MeToo consciousness about issues of female oppression and power), Roma (a drama of class consciousness and luminous empathy for a Mexican housekeeper, in an era when immigrants are being demonized), and Vice (a pointed political-satirical attack on the sins of a clandestine conservative demagogue).
Plus, a pair of movies that wear their social agenda in such a retrograde way that a lot of woke media types consider them to be beneath contempt, yet the agendas are still very much there: Green Book (a classic Hollywood liberal message movie about racial understanding) and Bohemian Rhapsody (which presents its Live Aid concert climax as the drama of Freddie Mercury finally coming to full terms with his sexual identity). I would argue, in fact, that though some of us have a major problem with the way that Bohemian Rhapsody plays down Freddies gayness, for the vast mainstream audience that embraced the movie, its old-fangled liberal message of self-acceptance was a crucial element of the films appeal. And A Star Is Born? Sorry, but in this company of ardent social earnestness it now looks like the crowd-pleaser that didnt get the memo.
Theres a hallowed Oscar tradition for all this, of course. The Academy Awards have frequently honored big-ticket message movies, even ones that clunked (like Gentlemans Agreement), and that dynamic just got ramped up in the 80s, during the era of films like Gandhi and Chariots of Fire. The celebration by critics, and now by the Academy of movies that bend with extreme prejudice toward a progressive agenda is a retro-fitted-for-the-Trump-era extension of that tradition. It reflects the evolving membership of the Academy, and it also reflects the trend weve seen in recent years, which is the Oscars veering closer and closer to becoming their own version of the Independent Spirit Awards.
Am I arguing for something else? Frankly, yes. I like films with social messages, too; thats an intrinsic element of what cinema is. Yet our humanity isnt only measured by our virtue. Its my belief that the movie industry, which has never in its history been more focused on creating mainstream product than it is now, should not spend Oscar night pretending that particular priority is somehow way, way down on its list. I was stoked to see Black Panther become the first superhero movie to get a best picture nomination, but why no nomination for its director, Ryan Coogler? The bottom-line reason is that popcorn movies are still not taken seriously on Oscar night. Adam McKays best director nod for Vice feels like a bit of a ringer to me its a movie far less celebrated, in the culture, than A Star Is Born or Black Panther. Its not exactly burning up the box office, either. But its got its activist firebrand messaging in the right place. And thats now the Oscar standard. Without it, youre just a belle at the wrong ball.
Oscar the Grouch ?
You’d better be a million dollar Marxist.
Hollywood has a blacklist that the media, historians, and academics don’t discuss.
It’s become the Grammy “best spoken word” award.
20 years of Democrat icon victories including 2 Grammys for pre-president Obama.
Who is this Oscar guy? and should we care?
So “Best Picture” really means Best Propaganda.
I can’t imagine how nasty it will be this year. All the liberals have gone full retard.
I’m glad I stopped watching it. Oh wait, I have never watched it.
Let’s make it the lowest viewed Oscars ever...
Who really gives a rats ass about the Oscars?
Truth. The red scare has nothing on them. Modern day blacklisting is the norm. They are fascists, leftist bullies. F 'em. POTUS should have a Hollywood summit, with James Woods, Scott Baio, Michael Baldwin, and any other free-thinking, America-loving producer, director or actor.
The last Oscars I remember watching was when Red Skelton received an award. Thats a long time ago.
I can’t believe there were no nominations for the movie about a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg fighting sex discrimination battles decades ago. The liberals love her.
Oops, I meant Stephen Baldwin.
Wasn't it Louis B Mayer who said if you want to send a message, use Western Union?
A social message? Like the Gosnell Movie, for example?
It will be. They cannot even find a host.
BlacKkKlansman (a racial police drama of searing relevance).
I would hope that is sarcasm.
They made sure that one got buried.
If hollywood never churned out another piece of,filth ever again, I wouldnt miss it at all.
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