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Most years I give the Oscars show a miss, because I don't go out to the movies as often as I'd like, and this year, like many years, I'd seen very few nominated movies anyway (This year, just "Gods and Monsters"). At $9.50 a pop in Manhattan, I like to go to films I really want to see, not merely to subsidize the Hollywood schlock machine. But this year I invited my friend Seth over to watch the extravaganza with me. I particularly wanted to see how the whole Elia Kazan Lifetime Achievement award segment would play out.
I forgot though, just how bad the Oscars show can be. This time it was four hours of bad taste that distinctly left a bad taste in my mouth. I was particularly appalled at an "interpretative dance" number supposedly paying "tribute" to the five films nominated for Best Picture. I don't know if I'll ever understand why these dancers were stomping around in some misguided (or demented) choreographer's creation, which somehow was supposed to symbolize World War II or The Holocaust. It was a travesty that could only have been thought up in LA.
This however was just a little blip in the parade of bores who climbed onto the stage to thank the Academy (whoever they are) for this or that award, all of which seem to outrank the Nobel Peace Price in stature and benefit to humanity, judging by the bombast pouring out from most of the trophy recipients. From the constant reaction shots around the stuffed auditorium, full of the hundreds and hundreds of gilded celebrities celebrating their unending narcissism,I could take the hint that this event was supposed to represent the pinnacle of cinematic existence. And so much Stanislavsky method acting in one room all at once! I wish there was an Oscar for best overwrought audience participant. Or a special effects award for the celebrity with the best teeth.
But no, instead we're shown how an enormous propaganda machine which churns out expensive and manipulative products (for more than 60 years now) awards itself for its efforts each year. This machine dehumanizes every last individual involved, from the rather ordinary people who are packaged into something "glamorous": the STARS, to the often very creative people who sell their souls to the devil for fame and fortune (sometimes). It's a machine that on occasion has created art, but no one can honestly say that what's trotted out each year at the Academy Awards is culture. Sometimes something truly good slips in, but mostly it's packaging and pull that matters as to whether a movie is nominated and what wins.
And perhaps that's why Elia Kazan was selected to receive a Lifetime Achievement award this year. Ostensibly it was because he's made some memorable films, and that's why you should give such an award, after all. But it seems that his real lifetime achievement was his ambition, which Hollywood rewards far more than artistic genius, and which America in general accepts as an adequate substitute . His most ambitious act was also his most controversial: he named names before the House Un-american Activities Committee in 1952. This act of collaboration with the gangs of anti-communists imposing a right-wing political correctness over all aspects of public life in America during the McCarthy era furthered his career. It opened doors for himself and he got a lot further than those with suspicious political pasts who were blacklisted for years. Many of these people were just as persecuted as intellectuals in any communist country. In the nearly fifty years since, Kazan's avoided the topic publicly,and rightly so. He did place a gratuitous full-page New York Times advertisement a few days after his testimony,in which he added insult to injury in his zealotry to portray himself as an anti-communist, and he attempted to whitewash his actions 40 years later in an autobiography as well.
In the end, his moment in the sun during these last years of his life turned out to be a numb and empty staged event (no surprise). He seemed frail and a bit doddering. And he needed the support of Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro emotionally and physically to help him get through this controversial moment. It seemed to me though that he was leaning on them because their moral stature is miles ahead of his own. Once again, it looked like he was using the system to his own benefit. The applause was certainly not overwhelming. Some stood to applaud this opportunist non-pareil in the Hollywood system. Others sat on their hands, and the cameras were whirling to catch all our favorite celebs reacting: would it be "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" for Elia Kazan? In less than a minute he was whisked off the stage, and the relief in the hall seemed to palpably emerge through my overpriced cable wires.
All in all, Gwyneth Paltrow was far more memorable, and scads more amusing. In Joan Rivers' silly pre-show she told an interviewer that Oscar "is very validating" (whatever that means!) And then she gave the performance of her life when she got the award for Best Actress, blubbering incoherently in her "thank you's".
Gwyneth Paltrow, I'm sorry to say, is not that good an actress, particularly up there on the Oscar stage. She's a mall rat who can fake a good English accent, (and she's no Meryl Streep.)
There were a number of other episodic inanities throughout the evening, presided over by a sadly unfunny Whoopie Goldberg (real name: Caryn Johnson). Celine Dion did not sing the theme to "Titanic" this year, but she did sing something that was very similar to what Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey warbled two and a half hours earlier. Oh yes, I almost didn't remember that Aerosmith were brought from the rheumatism clinic to sing that unforgettable anthem from "Armageddon".
During particularly bad moments in the course of the evening, Seth and I switched to a retrospective of the Jeffersons on Nick at Nite. At times it was hard to tell if we'd actually switched channels...
Next year I'll rent "Boys in the Band" or "Pope Joan"and leave Oscar night to the 100,000,000 other viewers who want to know whether Geena Davis will wear a dress that looks like it's made from an old windowgate. That's very important in the scheme of things, after all.
(March 21, 1999)
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