The American Spectator : Reality Hunger at the Oscars

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Reality Hunger at the Oscars

By James Bowman on 3.1.11 @ 6:02AM

There's another long winter's evening wasted.

How astonishing to me is the amount of attention given -- worldwide and not just in America -- to the Oscars. Why on earth should anyone outside the Motion Picture Academy itself care about the opinion of a group of people whose own lack of taste is demonstrated by the steady stream of rubbish, that is the usual product of the American film industry, as to which bits of these effluvia shall be judged the most fragrant? This year, it's true, there were some pretty good movies up for Best Picture for a change. Although none of those in this expanded, ten-picture category got my coveted two-star (must-see) rating, as many as four of them, including the winner, The King's Speech, got one star (worth seeing). But the hype surrounding the ceremony apparently had no notion of its being a particularly good year. What co-host Anne Hathaway called "Hollywood's biggest night" would have been equally big if all the Best Picture contenders had been the usual load of dreck.

If you doubt me, consider that the four movies I (kind of) liked -- besides The King's Speech they were True Grit, 127 Hours,and (the one of that lot that I thought should have won) Winter's Bone -- were all made for grown-ups. As, indeed, were all but two -- Toy Story 3 and Inception being the exceptions -- of the others. The New York Times even ran a piece on the day before the ceremony about how, after ignoring the over-50s for years, Hollywood had responded to "a startling reassertion of its multiplex power" by the cohort of old folks in serving up and then belauding and be-Oscaring the likes of The King's Speech. Admittedly, the fact that something is in the New York Times is no longer any guarantee of its being news, but it does seem odd in the circumstances that the Oscar ceremony itself was pitched, to the extent that it was, at the kiddies. Miss Hathaway herself led off with a joke about it. After her co-host, James Franco told her that "you look so beautiful and so hip," she replied: "Oh, thank you, James. You look very appealing to a younger demographic as well."

That was a typical Oscar-style self-referential joke, like the ensuing discussion of the presenters' own Best Actor/Actress nominations or the lack of them. For Mr. Franco had been nominated (for 127 Hours) and Miss Hathaway had not (for Love and Other Drugs). She went on to lament: "It used to be, you got naked, you got nominated. Not anymore." That is a variation on a joke so old they even showed a clip of Bob Hope telling a version of it (Oscar night at his house, he said, was known as Passover) 58 years ago. Not surprisingly, it got more of a laugh in 1953. As usual, too, the best jokes were the unconscious kind, as when Miss Hathaway began her cross-talk act with Mr. Franco by greeting the audience: "Ohmigosh! You're all real." Yeah, they're all real the way "reality TV" is real.

In fact, this was reality TV. That made it appropriate, too, that so many of the nominees were movies about real people -- or at least people who were real before Hollywood got its hands on them. The days when "you got naked, you got nominated" are now so long agone that you'd think somebody would have noticed today the maxim would be, you do an impression (preferably of a historical character, living or dead), you get nominated. Mr. Franco's nomination was for doing an impersonation of Aron Ralston, the climber who had to cut his own arm off when it was trapped Between a Rock and a Hard Place -- the title of his memoir. As Jasper Rees wrote in the London Daily Telegraph:

They used to give you an Oscar for playing someone with some kind of disability. Now you get gonged for impersonating a famous face: Piaf, Harvey Milk, Truman Capote, June Carter Cash, Idi Amin, the Queen, the serial killer Aileen Wuornos -- they've all won Oscars. This year, it's a straight fight between the last king of England and that bloke who invented Facebook.

Now why do you suppose this is? I put it down to reality-envy. The movie industry, having devoted itself heart and soul for so many years to fantasy because that was what was supposed to appeal to the teens who still predominate in the domestic audience, must at some level be hankering to get back in touch with reality. Maybe that's why they didn't laugh when Anne Hathaway, with the naiveté of youth, told them that they were "all real." They wished! Of course, she didn't mention that reality-hunger of a different kind was also what lay behind the fad for nakedness years ago. You've got to wonder if the beautiful people just haven't been looking for reality in the right places.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (40) | Leave a comment

A. Murray Kahn| 3.1.11 @ 6:45AM

Can the self-licking and deeply earnest fame dogs who win an award puh-leeeeze take out a full page ad in a trade publication apres Oscar to thank all the little people we have never heard of. Really. Say thank you to the nice man and woman, bow slightly to the assembled and resume your seat.

Alan Brooks| 3.1.11 @ 4:35PM

Exactly: the Oscars are the Industry presenting awards to itself.
Music Industry is the same.

Stuart Koehl| 3.1.11 @ 6:55AM

Bowman, if you don't think Toy Story 3 wasn't made for grownups, you suffer from a seriously crimped imagination. Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear are far more real life than the bozo who invented Facebook.

Appleby| 3.1.11 @ 7:38AM

The comment that *You are all real* is a direct reference to the bewildered look in the eyes of the binkie obsessed brat who plows into a crowd of people and suddenly notices that he is trying to go in through the exit in a world where everyone else is not in fact an avatar on his little blue screen.

I have seen The Kings Speech and I have no desire to see any of the other Contenders. I have a good collection of movies from an age when yelling f*** was not considered Dialogue, that I can watch any time I want to.

PJ| 3.1.11 @ 8:22AM

"True Grit" really is good!

Appleby| 3.1.11 @ 11:59AM

Saw it with John Wayne and that was enough.

Roscoe| 3.1.11 @ 7:44AM

"Why on earth should anyone outside the Motion Picture Academy itself care..."
What else is one going to talk about on facebook?

Ryan| 3.1.11 @ 8:20AM

A Sons of Guns marathon was on Discovery.

Better show.

grant1863| 3.1.11 @ 11:14AM

yes it was

Mike Hawk| 3.1.11 @ 8:21AM

Two things I don't do or do rarely. I watch very little TV and I don't go to the movies. I have no idea who those celeb morons are and don't give a hoot. My 30 plus year record of not watching the Oscars is intact.

PJ| 3.1.11 @ 8:27AM

Don't break your record. I unfortunately had to break mine: had to make sure the crap (James Franco is ugly in drag.) wasn't too outrageous for my daughters to watch. And it wasn't, just devoid of any smidgen of talent.

Rowdy Boots| 3.1.11 @ 9:51AM

34 years and counting!

(AND I AM AN ACTOR/PLAYWRIGHT IN STAGE THEATER)!

Rowdy Boots| 3.1.11 @ 9:48AM

The most disheartening thing about the Oscars is the fact that the talent and skill levels has declined tremendously and that Hollywood "royalty" really think they are better than "other" people (see charlie sheen remarks).

While all of us theatre artists work hard at our craft and try to be true to the notions that art is a sacred endeavor, Hollywood pats itself on the back yearly for transgressing not only values and respect for a Craft, but also for anything that gets news.

In reality, if you are a drug addict and say nasty things that get your face plastered all over the media and if you rant Anti-American diatribes and consort with dictators, you would lose your job with any self-respecting company.

In Hollywood, you win an Oscar.

Hence, viewership declines, "other" people's interests wane, and Hollywood's PR geniuses try to figure out why no one cares anymore about their "stars".

Maybe they should really get some real talent off the streets where we, the "other" people have been locked out.

Rowdy Boots

Seek| 3.1.11 @ 11:50AM

Maybe your envy is showing. It takes a lot more than glamour to make a movie, on time and on budget. Personally, I'll take one Martin Scorsese over ten James Bowmans.

Skippy| 3.1.11 @ 4:17PM

Sorry, not me.
Having endured numerous Scorcese and Coen flicks, I can honestly say "no mas."
The reason? I have yet to meet one person in any of their films I give a damn about.
Yeah yeah, I know "geniuses, artists, important". Horsecrap.
Entertain me with something rewarding rather than disturbing occasionally and we'll talk.
As Mr. Bowmans permanent apologist, I catch a lot of guff from the arts and croissants crowd, but who cares?!
I have not stepped into a crowded, loud, overpriced theater filled with rude teens in 10 years. Or watched the Oscars since Billy Crystal was host.
If Hollywood loved the public as much as the obverse, there would be a lot better movies being made.
Bowman is the best reviewer writing today.

Grzmlyk| 3.1.11 @ 10:20AM

I only saw two of this year's contenders: The King's Speech and True Grit - both were excellent, if somewhat flawed, pieces of filmmaking (and yes, I love John Wayne and no, he can never be bested in that role; but Bridges was excellent nevertheless).

I long for the days when movies assumed their audiences were grown-ups. Of course I understand that global markets, economics, technology and demographics have utterly changed the calculus that goes into creating a movie.

But TCM showed "It Happened One Night" the other night, which unexpectedly swept the Oscars in, I believe, 1935 (it was made in '34). It had been intended as a quickie pot poiler that neither of its stars was enthusiastic about doing, and expectations were modest.

But it struck a chord with audiences and was deemed an instant classic.

It's funny - no doubt our youth look back at the benighted 1930s and think everyone alive then was a benighted rube - no Internet, no iphones, no Facebook, no Lady Gaga.

But those "rubes" had few shiny objects to distract them from an often-harsh reality. They had virtually no other options to escape their responsibilities, except for the movies - even the most fantastical of which demonstrated a firm grasp of the adult sensibilities from which they sprang (My Man Godfrey comes to mind).

Yes, Hollywood has always had a liberal bent and yes, there is a strain of class warfare that runs through even some of our most beloved classics. But the best of these still draw on fundamentals like plot, character and relationships for their power.

Today we have, by tacit mutual consent, happily agreed to embrace an utterly false consciousness wherein we celebrate a kind of eternal adolescence. It is a relentless and vainglorious narcissism that finds the height of its expression in our blatantly Marxist - and ineluctably juvenile - pop culture.

Which is why It Happened One Night is such a treat that has lost none of its charm or its essential humanity. What a great movie - the characters are three-dimensional and still fresh, almost 80 years after it was made. That is because they are imbued with humanity - something that is, for the most part, out of fashion in Hollywood, but which remains timeless whether we care to deny it or not.

Hollywood can still make a good movie occasionally; The King's Speech is about the small triumphs of the human will and the power of true friendship. True Grit is ultimately about redemption.

But it saddens me that, to the extent movies even try to be grown-up anymore, they celebrate what sets us apart from humanity - not what unites us.

Not a sign of a healthy society.

CharlieEcho| 3.1.11 @ 10:26AM

I didn't watch. I can't remember the last time I did watch Oscars. It's been a while since I've event set foot in a "movie" theater. I do know it was post cellphone and whispered chat would have, at that time been, welcome. I can't name most of todays, or even a few, "stars". How many award shows are there now? Book's, give me books. that and my Internet. It's time for my nap.

Albert| 3.1.11 @ 10:57AM

Were the Oscars on recently?

Dan Sudlik| 3.1.11 @ 11:13AM

Oscar night is only a waste of time if you watch. We had much more fun watching TCM. I think we watched Ben Hur that night, or maybe It Happened One Night (Thanks DVR). Either was far and away better than the "Real" Oscar night.

Seek| 3.1.11 @ 11:52AM

I've watched literally over a thousand old movies. Frankly, they simply weren't as good as the recent ones. The lighting, set design, special effects, of course, weren't even close. But neither are the plotting are acting.

Mark| 3.1.11 @ 1:30PM

I might buy most of what you are selling here, Seek, but you claim the plotting is better in today's movies. I watch lots of movies, too. What you claim just isn't true. A plot is what many modern movies lack, and a plot is what old movies never lack.

I was glad to see that you didn't claim the dialogue is better today.

Cpm| 3.1.11 @ 1:37PM

But the writing, the story, was light years ahead of the dreck that comes out today. That's why everything today is a remake.

Grzmlyk| 3.1.11 @ 2:05PM

I'm thinking you watched the wrong thousand movies.

Given the technology they had to deal with, some of the stuff they pulled off in the old days amazes me. There's an outdoor tracking shot in It Happened One Night that is jaw-dropping in its proficiency and evocative efficacy. Look at any of Orson Welles' camera or lighting work. Or John Huston's. Or Hitchcock's. Or John Ford's.

As for acting, most acting in movies - today and throughout the history of film - ranges from mediocre to poor. Additionally, acting styles, like everything else, are subject to fads and trends; 1930s acting is different from 1940s acting and so on.

Most actors succomb to the current fashion, although many are amazingly natural throughout the ages - Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant - all very natural. And Jean Harlow is as fresh today as she was when she made Red Dust.

And acting styles can vary from movie to movie. Mary Astor is highly affected in that 1940s way in The Maltese Falcon - yet her acting is very naturalistic in Meet Me in St. Louis, made only a year or so later. Speaking of that film, Judy Garland was a fine actress whose naturalness and vulnerability sometimes takes your breath away, as in A Star is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg.

Also, don't forget why movies have become more naturalistic overall - it's a phenomenon brought about in no small part by better, more intimacy-promoting technology as well as an ever-more media savvy and privacy-deprived populace that has demonded a more quotidian, grittier reality to its films. This evolution has served to nudge acting styles closer to what we see in day-to-day life.

But the craft still has its fads and its tropes. This is painfully obvious among TV actors, but is also in plenty of evidence in film. Look at Jennifer Aniston - like many actors today, her only goal, it seems, is to deliver a line so that it sounds "natural." Well, her line deliveries all do have a sort of familiar prosiac quality to them. But they are also shorn of a lot of the inner passion, the psychological complexity, the situational exigencies, that could make her characters more than one inch deep.

I think Jennifer Love Hewitt is perhaps the poster girl for modern camera acting styles - it may come off as natural upon first viewing, but it is in fact all attitude, with very little real acting going on. Real actors who appear with her - as Martha Plimpton did recently - are rare among the stars of today's shows - posers and mannekins that they are (see Caruso, David).

Another trend - and it's more prevalent in females - is, when an actress's character is asked a probing question in a scene, she'll invariably look off to her left for a couple of seconds before answering.

It's subtler perhaps than Bette Davis's theatrics, but it is no less an affectation, and will be no less excoriated by film watchers 20 years hence, when acting fashion has moved on.

Oldefarte| 3.1.11 @ 11:53AM

The last popular-successful movie made for ADULTS was Titanic, and 99% currently are targeted at the imbicilic moron pre-teen crowd. While mommy and daddy are monetarily funding their offsprings' viewing of this typical excrement produced by Hollywood, they ignorantly are confused about their little darlings' radical-extremist viewpoints [derived from these propaganda-brainwashing vehicles]. Hollywood could save itself tons of money by simply producing flashing images of their desired liberal philosophy onto the screen [ie a flashing Coke bottle/sign of years past that was outlawed eventually]. Racism, homophobism, anti-religiocity, etc are the current battle cries of these Charlie Sheenesk looney toon facilitators of sexual, immoral trash seen in theatres today!!!!!!!!

Appleby| 3.1.11 @ 12:04PM

Titanic was not a movie for adults. The theatre I saw it in was shouting DROWN, JACK! JUST SHUT UP AND DROWN! well before he finally let go and did.

Take out the special effects and it was not the least bit better than "A Night To Remember" which was the last Titanic movie I saw.

Renaissance Nerd| 3.1.11 @ 4:01PM

Have to disagree with you there. A movie full of college freshman bull session philosophical points is not 'made for adults.' That movie was just a rehash of several standard Hollywood storylines with some nifty special effects. I never did watch it in one sitting; I eventually saw the whole thing but it was so sickening I couldn't bear it for long. The only time 'the same old story' rehashed for the millionth time is interesting is when it's just plain fun, without any pretensions. If I'm going to be preached at, the preachers should at least try to come up with something more than stale platitudes.

cowgirl| 3.1.11 @ 12:18PM

The Oscars - what is that?

Renaissance Nerd| 3.1.11 @ 4:44PM

I wish these goofs would get a clue. What else is there BESIDES reality? There are no fake people, no, not even actors are fake. Fiction emanates from real people. So long as one remembers that fiction is a window into the mind of a real person (and in a movie of several persons), there's no reason to consider reality as being lost.

Fantasy is not the antithesis of reality. Art is deception that illuminates truth. Even Jesus spoke in parables. Art that merely deceives is a rebellion against reality, but remains real, because a lie harms real people by making them believe that real things aren't or vice versa. It is impossible to escape reality, though so many of us try. Fantasy moves a real thought, preferably a truth, into a setting that gives it sharper clarity by contrast with the fiction surrounding it. Fantasy could be the apotheosis of fiction, in film or novel, because any story based on the world as it is carries too many assumptions and prejudices, while an original fantasy could paint a strange world all around the illumination of truth at the center. That after all was the point of a movie like 'Avatar,' except that instead of home truths the gorgeous tapestry pointed to tired and demonstrably false platitudes. It also shares the problem of science fiction as opposed to fantasy; too many assumptions carried forward. Certainly most fantasy uses cliches rather than any original content, but the present state is not the final word on the potential of the medium.

Hollywood is welcome to fantasy, but the problem is that after tirelessly preaching lies for generations, liars eventually get lost in falsehoods of their own making. What they want is not reality but truth. Might seem like the same thing, but it's not. Many people who live in reality are lost in lies and can't see it because they avoid truths of all kinds.

Tina B| 3.1.11 @ 5:29PM

There's a great little film called Full Count. I would recommend to anyone, for good dialogue, plot, music, understated but good acting, people I could relate to and quickly grew to care about.

I liked it enough so that I watched it every time it came on (when I got free movie stations during a promo) just to get all the ins and outs of the relationships and plot details.

Some raw language, no sexual romps, just some interesting situations and characters. Try it, rent it, you may thank me.

Claypoole| 3.1.11 @ 5:44PM

If you're looking for a good movie, try "You Can Count On Me." It's been out for a few years on DVD. A story of forgiveness and redemption--if you don't cry at the end, you have no heart.

Tina B| 3.1.11 @ 6:07PM

Thanks for your recommendation Claypoole, I will act on it.

And you reminded me of a new film, one of those made by an indie group of Christians, called "The Grace Card." It is PG13 for some violence. The fine (now elderly) actor Lou Gossett Jr. is a member of the cast.

I just watched the trailer of the recently released movie. It, too, is a story of forgiveness and redemption. Just FYI if anyone is interested.

Negro X| 3.1.11 @ 7:51PM

I saw none of this hollywood garbage and am a better person for it. Read a book instead.

Juan Jose Morales| 3.1.11 @ 9:20PM

Oh, my, ain't we the big gaggle of little snobs. Judging from regular watching of TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES, the film makers of the past also produced huge piles of garbage. Who is alive anymore who would give AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS the Oscar for Best Picture of any year? Except for Cantinflas' performance, that movie was a total waste of the huge budget spent on it.

Dee See| 3.1.11 @ 9:41PM

---As consciousness of over a century of
Globalist-cabalist 'staged' history is surely sweeping the world, and as the reality behind
the American taxpayer funded eugenics 'miracle'
of RED China becomes ever more evident
----time for the annual round of 'perception
management' and 'predictive programming'
from franchise slum Hollywood.

marshcope | 3.1.11 @ 11:54PM

I like to wait every year for the tribute to the Stars who have died in the last year, and each year the clapping from the current stars and the seat fillers gets more tepid and weak, or the sound people make it seem so. Even Tony Curtis and Patricia Neal roused little memorial response from the audience. Ms. Barrie at least let loose on the old moguls who would not let Lena Horne become a Big Star, but Hallie was kicking the old dead horses of the studio system era. I hope next year they give some loud applause for my goddess Jane Russell, but the current crop of Stars probably do not know who she was.

Heretic666| 3.2.11 @ 1:25PM

Why is this guy getting paid to write articles? a whinny lil C*NT that hates everything that doesn't suit his simple minded opinions. "Why on earth should anyone outside "the spectator's readers" care about the opinion of a person whose own lack of taste is demonstrated by the steady stream of rubbish, that is the usual product of JAMES BOWMAN.

Conserdude| 3.2.11 @ 2:35PM

And speaking of Oscars going to actors portraying real people, Jamie Foxx got one (well deserved) for playing Ray Charles

marshcope| 3.2.11 @ 8:27PM

I should retract my comments on movie actors being Dumb. I suppose that no one can go out in front of a camera and act on film without having intelligence of the acting art and human behavior, whether in life the actor has a head full of infobits. Whether Channing Tatum knows sicum about John Bunny's acting technique is probably not the way to judge Chan's talents.