The Academy Awards, the Canon, the Bros, and Something Better
The Academy Award nominations are out, the troubles continue, and people smarter than me have suggestions for ways forward.
About eight days ago, I rose before the sun to watch the typically cringey, yet surprisingly smooth telecast of the Academy Awards nominations. I love the anticipation that months of prognosticating and cramming in movie viewings brings, and the attempt to create a wholecloth view of an entire year’s worth of cinema. The telecast itself, which is just two actors reading names off a teleprompter for 30 minutes, is an incredible combination of disgust (that a group of people I’ve never met would dare have different niche tastes than me) and pure delight (that a group of people I’ve never met somehow also have the same niche tastes as me). And inevitably, as soon as the show ends, the creeping dread of actualizing what this group of people I’ve never met has done, has said, has set in a stone, starts to flood in.
One month before the U.S. recognized the COVID-19 pandemic for what it was, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Ever since that (wonderful) moment, I have been in a whirlwind of learning and speculating and re-learning the value of this establishment, of awarding art, of comparing art, of list making, and of making a canon.
As we move forward from that 2020 Award show — and even past 2018’s monumental GET OUT Best Screenplay/Moonlight Best Picture wins — and as the Academy’s voting body continues to change, we see retaliations or surprises or abominations of choices to canonize films and filmmakers: 2021’s Nomadland Best Picture win (weird pick), 2022’s CODA win (weirder pick), 2019’s Green Book win (weirdest pick), the stomach-turning final announcement in 2021 that Anthony Hopkins, who wasn’t at the show, had won best actor over Chadwick Boseman, in his last role after dying from cancer just months before, and then cutting to black to end the telecast. The annual attempt to massage the nominations into a possibility of rewarding or fun or interesting or “correct” winners is frequently followed by something not quite on the mark.
More important than losing or winning is even being in the conversation. This year, the trend of not nominating black women continued. As Robert Daniels, rigid for RogerEbert.com and many other bylines, writes: “The organization supposedly went through a collective soul-searching after 2015, when April Reign made #OscarsSoWhite a cultural touchstone. The resulting multiyear effort to diversify the academy’s voting body has produced seismic wins such as “Moonlight” and “Parasite” taking the prize for best picture. For Black women, little has changed.”
The Academy itself, much like The Golden Globes’ voting body: the Hollywood Foreign Press, continues to stumble through a reshaping, “diversifying” process. It’s important that they continue to reach for this goal, because in the Academy’s case, they are the end all and be all for American film. For those inside and outside of the industry, these golden statues, and the moments on the stage in front of an ever-dwindling TV audience, are what matter most (other than money, the other only thing that matters to those inside and outside of the industry). There are, of course, filmmakers and producers et. Al. Who make things just to make things, and tell stories, and reach out to people, but in order to do so on the biggest stage possible, you have to play the games.
—
I want to talk a bit about those outside the industry that lean on these awards, and on lists and categorization and ranking. There’s a particular group of people that I am fascinated by, that I am deeply worried about, and that I sort-of, maybe, used to be on the fringes of: the psychobro. Men (typically) who share a certain taste in a certain type of movie, and who frequently talk over and past those opposed to their tastes, or those who want to talk about literally anything else. They’re one of many types of in-groups in the film world that work to uplift exactly one version of an art-form, and exclude anything else. They work hard to tip the scales of the IMDB Top 250 movies list, they poorly rate movies starring black or brown people before they even see the movie, and they have one of the louder voices at trivia nights or Oscars parties or at your work’s Christmas party that has nothing to do with movies. They believe in lists and canons and exclusion and being right. They worry about being heard, and being valued, and mattering. They taint the water of the conversation, and it’s too bad. I’m not sure that it is their presence, however, that pushes me away from the idea of the Academy Awards and ‘the canon’.
In a wonderful conversation with Daphne Brooks this past spring, Wesley Morris wondered if there was value in the canon, in Casey Casum’s Top 40 that he would chart out every week as a kid. They are commercial and business focused enterprises, Morris admits, but they must have some shred of importance… right? Brooks thinks we can do better.
Rather than building a rigid canon, Brooks supports practicing the shepherdship of art, a guardianship and carrying of works that need care and focus and love. What are different forms of care we can take for art? Criticism can do this work, sometimes. Awards can do this work, sometimes. But a canon or lists, both exclusionary practices, cannot. They include only to additionally exclude. The creation of “the best ever” only ever judges with certain criteria, chosen by whoever is creating or contributing to it, and applies or finds the criteria in art subjectively. Data and numbers and ratings are ultimately flat and uninteresting and quantifying, rather than qualifying. In other words, it’s boring.
—
My trying to write through and share these thoughts is an attempt to say that the Academy Awards are a datapoint. They aren’t strictly commercial, and they aren’t completely working in the service of protecting, shepherding, or canonizing art. People from different organizations and bureaus of the industry are voting individually. But all of those votes combine, sometimes in a ranked order fashion, to create an amorphous collective that decides the most important award(s). And as one canonically great film once said: a person is smart; people are dumb.
And of course, I am people. I will be watching the Academy Awards (hopefully in person, and not on an airplane —ONYX SCHEDULE LINK —), and I will be hoping and hopeful; yearning for representative wins, wishing for moving and meaningful conversations and speeches; and, admittedly, longing for whatever wackiness these strange people come up with under pressure, and with a champagne or two in them.
I encourage you, outside of the fun of the awards and the awards seasons, to find your own version of shepherding and guardianship for the things that move you. Share those links, speak your truth, show people good things. Just don’t be a ‘bro’ about it.
Ok, so opened like 4 cans of worms with this piece. I don’t think I worked through a majority of the worms in any of the cans, despite my taking twice the normal amount of writing time. This is why we have editors.
But I’m glad I get to share a couple of ideas, and a couple of wonderful sources of information for those ideas from other, much smarter people.
I’ll see you on Friday for some quick thoughts on some great stuff I’ve experienced the last two weeks.
As always, share your thoughts, and your own somethings new.
TTFN,
B