Why Am I Suddenly Excited About the Oscars This Year?

I don't really get that into the Oscars. They tend to be awarded based on which nominee attends the right parties and schmoozes the right way, or which idea/cause is most popular at the time, rather than which one is truly the most deserving. I have to say, it is rare to find a nominee that's undeserving of recognition or praise, but the actual winners do tend to be based around political (and by this I mean Hollywood politics, not politics-politics) decisions instead of technical merits. So I don't tend to pay attention much unless a movie I particularly like is up for something major.

But that isn't to say they don't matter. To the average moviegoer, they don't really, people will see what they want to see regardless of awards. But to the people making films in Hollywood they do matter because not only does it bring them recognition and a certain status amongst viewers, but it opens doors to projects they might not be considered for otherwise. An Oscar win to executives can mean a certain bankability because suddenly people know who this person is and are more likely to be interested in a film from a familiar name. To the winner, it means a certain level of prestige, but more than that, it means being taken seriously. Of course, it adds pressure, because then they have to deliver something on par with something that successful or they risk being labeled a fluke, or even worse a hack with a lucky win. But you still get your name and your movie branded with the Oscar-Winner seal forever, and that's more than most people get.

But given that that's pretty much a constant, why do I actually care this year when I don't most of the time? No, it's not because Up might be be nominated for Best Picture (razzaflabbin' Best Animated Feature category... I learned my lesson after Ratatouille and Persepolis got their conciliatory nominations there in '07 instead of being able to contend for the "more serious" category-- and really, it does get a little boring when Pixar wins it every freaking year; not that they don't deserve to win it, but geez, they may as well just start calling it the Pixar Award), it's because a woman is going to be nominated for Best Director for only the fourth time ever. And she has a serious shot at being the first one to win it.

Out of 82 years and approximately 410 Best Director nominations, Katheryn Bigelow will be the fourth woman nominee, behind Lina Wertmuller in 1976, Jane Campion in 1993, and Sofia Coppola in 2003 (none of whom won, I might add). This weekend, she won the Director's Guild of America award for Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film, and the DGA is an almost flawless match with the Academy Award for Best Director (according to what I've been reading, there have only been six deviations from DGA winners and Oscar winners). She is the first woman to win that award, too, and now she's the front-runner for the Oscar.

Now, to be fair, I haven't seen her film, The Hurt Locker yet. I hear it's very good, and I've been seeing snippets about critics lauding her very highly for her work, and her topping many of their lists for best director of the year. I haven't heard anyone saying that she's only getting attention because she's a woman, or that she didn't deserve to win the DGA just as much as anyone else that was up for it. In fact the only reservations about this I hear are from a few people who wish the film that got the possible first woman winner nominated was a "woman's" film instead of a "guy's" film (The Hurt Locker is about soldiers in the Iraq War-- an action/suspense movie). While I understand that sentiment and agree with it to a certain extent, 2009 was a phenomenal year for women-fueled movies, with Julie & Julia at $94.1 million, It's Complicated at $100 million, The Proposal at $164 million, The Blind Side at $235 million, and New Moon at $293 million, and all of them hitting in the last half of the year. Say what you will about any of them as films, the fact is, they were geared for women, starred women (two of them starring the same woman, who is over forty to boot), and three of them were even directed by women. New Moon's numbers were something like 90% female viewers (note: not fact-checked, am basing this on memory which is often faulty with numbers), making that even more astounding (most Hollywood blockbusters are split around 60% male and 40% female audiences, so even with "guy" films, women make up a significant portion of ticket sales). Normally a movie like that making that kind of money will be chalked up to a fluke by studio execs, who from what I've been given to understand by people in the know, like Nia Vardalos (writer and star of My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding) writing an article stating that during a movie pitch she was asked to switch the female lead to a man because "women don't go to movies", and based on the levels of contempt, vitriol, and venom that arose when NPR's Linda Holmes posted an open letter to Pixar asking why they hadn't yet made a film starring a female lead (which I blogged about early on here). This year, of all years, is the one that is making people notice because women are proving the execs wrong and proving that they do go to movies.

So I don't care if Bigelow directed an action thriller and that's considered a "guy" movie because there is plenty of proof that female-driven, made, and geared films are profitable and desired by women who want to see themselves reflected on the screen as much as the guys do. Bigelow did the job, she directed a really good movie from all accounts, and she deserves the award as much as anyone else up there. So yeah, I want her to win it. I want her to win it bad because it's one less glass ceiling in the world, because it's 2010 and women make up 51% of the population and it's about time, because I want that message to resonate with all those girls out there who might have talked themselves out of a directing career because it's so hard to be successful, because I want it to resonate with the studio execs, because I want it to resonate with everyone who considers the efforts, ambitions, dreams, thoughts, feelings, and lives of women as less important or meaningful than that of men, and I want it for me. I'm headed to film school in a few short years and yeah, I'd like to direct someday, and I'd for damn sure like to be taken seriously enough to be given the chance to succeed or fail at it on my own merits, not on the basis of my gender. An Oscar win won't magically make that happen, but it's a step forward, and that's what I care about.

You and Your Racist Friend

(The title of this post comes from a They Might Be Giants song, before I get any questions about it. I'm bad at titles.)

Okay, so I'm still working on other entries, but they're requiring more research on my part, so they're slower going. And I really felt the need to post something about this, since it's such a prevalent part of discussing pop culture, and particularly films.

Several years ago, Nickelodeon had a show on called Avatar: The Last Airbender that I enjoyed, but rarely saw just because I was usually too busy and was never entirely sure when it was on anyway. But it was a pretty progressive show for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the break from the typical European/Anglo-centric setting/characters, but also because it had a linear plotline that progressed throughout the series, and some other things that others who know the show better than I have talked about at length. But it was very deliberately set in a Pacific-Asia-based world, with certain countries and regions based on Chinese, Tibetan, Inuit, Mongolian, and South-East Asian cultures, respectively, and heavily used philosophy, religion, clothing, writing and other such elements from the same regions as well. It was a very well-thought out world and the characters always seemed to me like they had a bit more depth than your typical afternoon cartoon show as well, and it developed a pretty big following, not just amongst children, but teens and even adults as well. It had a complex storyline that dealt with issues like war, xenophobia, ethnic cleansing, and the like, and it seemed to handle them well without getting too disturbing for younger viewers.

Well, because it was so popular, of course Hollywood, which seems to have run out of ideas of its own these days, came calling about a live-action adaptation. And of course, Hollywood being Hollywood, got its grubby paws all over it and whitewashed the cast. The three main lead characters, two Inuit-based and one Tibetan-based, are being played by white actors in the film. The fourth lead, the villain, was originally cast to be white as well, but due to massive fan outcry, the studio recast Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame in the role, thus making him, and the Fire Nation from which he comes, the only leading character of Asian ethnicity. So yeah, not only are there three white kids saving the world, but the main antagonist nation is basically India. Yeah, that's not just slightly distasteful or anything.

I could go on at length about how much I find wrong with how the studio has handled this film, but it'd probably be pretty hypocritical of me, since I've only seen the show a handful of times. However, there is a lot of dialogue about it from plenty of people who have, and I recently came across this post from someone who is not only a fan of the show, but a professional in the animation industry as well (edit: sorry, she's not actually a pro, she just knows enough that I thought she was. Whoops!), and she put her concerns so much better than I could have, so I'll just link you: On the Avatar Racefail.

Now, having said all that, at the end of the day, I can't honestly say I'm surprised that this happened. What does surprise me is the number of people who seem to think it doesn't matter. Sorry, guys, as much as some people like to say so, we don't live in a post-racist society. Of course I don't believe that race should matter as much as it does, but regardless of how we know things should be, we also can't let it obscure our view of how things really are. And as diverse a place as the US is, you wouldn't really know it to look at most of our TV and film output. Despite living in the twenty-first century, most of our film-based pop culture is very white, middle-class because that's what producers and studios think the "default" is. When they're selling a product (and believe me, that's what most pop culture media is-- "art" very rarely enters the equation), their main concern is making it as accessible to the widest audience possible. Sure, they'll toss some "tokens" in to keep the "P.C. Police" at bay, but you will almost never see a minority character in a leading part unless they've become too popular to afford to leave out. See, the dangerous thing about this form of racism is that it's not so much a "keep the minorities in their place" thing, it's a "well we need to reach the biggest demographic and more people relate to white guys" thing. The assumption is that having "ethnic" leads will alienate the mainstream American viewing audience, which is so beyond assenine, I can't even begin to articulate all the reasons why.

This is the same mentality that Nia Vardalos, the writer and star of My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding has recently written about dealing with when trying to pitch her new movie idea-- "Women Don't Go to Movies"-- huh?. This isn't some antiquated old school of thought from back in the Hays Code days of Hollywood, it's still very much alive now, it's just less overt. To the people who say, 'it's not that big of a deal', or, 'why do you people have to make a race/gender issue out of everything?', I say it does matter because there's a huge percentage of the population in the U.S. alone who feel marginalized, or even outright vilified by the culture they live in, even if they're fifth-generation U.S.-born. And people make a big deal out of this stuff because if no one said anything, nothing would change. The studios in Hollywood don't give a rat's ass about anything but their bottom line, and the only way they change anything is if the viewing public fail to give them money for their product. If people who know better don't make a stink and raise these problems (that do tend to get brushed under the carpet, probably because they're such an intrinsic part of our culture and people just don't notice it), the problems will not go away on their own.

I've actually been kicking around the idea of asking people to try something the next time they go to a rental store, or are browsing Netflix, or looking at the movies playing at their local theater, to take a second and look at the movies and take note of what the race and gender of the star. And then change them. And then think about how they feel about the movie then, or even how they might feel if those really were their viewing options. I'm not trying to be snotty (although I'm sure I'm coming across that way), I'm honestly, genuinely curious to find out how people feel about it.