Beauty Amidst The Beast

A genuine moment of Oscar bliss has already been lost in the shuffle of Sunday night’s disastrous telecast.

In the middle of the slop, and well before the slap, there was a very brief experience of pure joy viewers of the Oscars got when Troy Kotsur became only the 2nd deaf actor to receive an Academy Award in the ceremony’s 94 year history. It had become an inevitability that Kotsur would win the award for Best Supporting Actor in the weeks leading up to the big night. With loads of cash supply for a stealthy awards campaign thanks to Apple’s vast pockets, as well as a ton of momentum from word-of-mouth viewers, CODA’s reign as movie festival darling culminated in last night’s huge night for the film, winning all 3 Oscars it was nominated for (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor).

Nonetheless, the resulting Oscar win for Kotsur and the speech that followed was filled with some very sincere moments of human interaction. As is tradition for the Best Supporting Actor portion of the ceremony, presenting the award was last year’s Best Supporting Actress winner. In this case it was Youn Yuh-jung, the South Korean actor who deservedly won for her role in last year’s Minari.

We don’t need to trek too deeply into the muck of Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony. Well before the moment everyone is talking about, the show was a train wreck. In a year where conciseness seemed to be a point of emphasis for the show’s producers (they cut several awards from the actual live broadcast), it still clocked in at a whopping 3 hours and 40 minutes. This was due to many things, but count among them the five musical performances including the OUT OF LEFT-FIELD MEGAN THE STALLION CAMEO I’M STILL HOWLING ABOUT, the incredibly long show introduction that listed every single presenter/performer the night had in store, a bizarre In Memoriam segment that featured wholly inappropriate music and dance routines while also omitting the recently departed Bob Saget and Ed Asner from the montage.

But in a show that featured more awkward exchanges of dialogue and cringeworthy production flubs than ABC would care to count, there was that moment of human connectedness. And it was needed. After several years of pandemic-charged isolation, it’s easy to see how a gathering of such big egos in such a small room might lead to some fireworks. This isn’t an original thought, but people truly don’t know how to act in public any more. It should not come as a surprise that the issue is amplified if those same people happen to be very, very rich.

So it’s ironic (and somehow fitting) that two actors who could not be any more different in appearance or culture conjured up this moment of awards show zen. Yuh-jung calmly taking the Oscar so Kotsur could utilize his hands to sign. Standing by the deaf actors side, face plastered with a look of utter admiration for this individual who has overcome an incredibly tough journey to get here, on film’s biggest stage. It’s the kind of heart-warming image Oscar showrunners dream of. It’s the kind of real interaction we’ve been robbed of from these ultimately meaningless awards shows over the past several years.

It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t headline-grabbing. It was just a really nice moment. And that should be remembered.