Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings 

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Movie Monday - The Oscars

 

Once a year, with the Academy Awards, insiders put on a fabulous party for themselves in order to get us, outsiders, to pay for their products. With the Oscars, we, the movie-going public, are the outsiders and so many of us glob onto this industry love-fest where they decide who's the best in their profession, award them in lavish style and then say to us: Now we've told you what movies/actors you should like the most, please go and pay our outrageous ticket prices/DVD prices/cable prices to watch them again and again.

 

I do like movies. I watch them way too much and I think it would be nice to have lists with annotation of yearly superior/excellent movies and performances. But reducing everything to just one "best" for each category has always seemed a lousy idea to me, no matter what profession you're touting.

 

Since most of us, movie lovers, will be cruising the web for Oscar comments, I won't bother you with all of the insane "best" choices from the past. Just to cite one example: Luis Rainer won the first of her consecutive Best Actress awards for The Great Ziegfeld in 1936. Her role was very, very minor; even as a supporting actress nomination it would have been minor. (And she could have been nominated in that category since it had just been added as an award category that year.) Most movie historians agree that Rainer won for a two minute scene where she tearfully calls her ex-husband to congratulate him on his marriage to Billie Burke. OK, I get it; she was sad but she held back on the weeping until she hung up. What an acting stretch! IMDb does a good job describing the controversy back in 1936 over this nomination and how she won:  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, listed her as a lead player, then got out its block vote for her.

 

The 2013 Oscars walk the same flawed path: They honored an actor from the historically flawed movie, Lincoln, and then they gave the Best Picture nod to Argos, which portrays history as it didn't happen. (Argos gives us American heroes in a true-life rescue operation which was run by the Canadians.) But then, the movie industry from the get-go always twisted the truth to produce more palatable, more heroic, more profitable fiction.

 

 Of course, I will, at some point, be watching these movies. I'll grouse about a lot of them and like/maybe love others. But I will understand that I'm just watching a finished product which was produced by a company. (Have you ever sat through all the ending credits? There are more people listed there than many US medium-sized businesses!) And like other such-created products (cigarettes, prescription drugs, cars), movies are made so you will like them enough, get caught in their advertising push enough, to buy them, again and again and again.

 

But remember, as Michael Moore said in regard to the movies today: We live in fictitious times. Movies entertain or educate. Right now, main stream movies are a lousy place to get an education. But in the rocky times we live in, we can always use their entertainment. See you next week.