The Oscars : Vanity Parade for a Dead Culture
Excuse a rant
Did you hear the exciting controversy? Margot Robbie got snubbed for her era defining performance as Barbie, while co star Ryan Gosling got nominated. Sexism? Irony? Oh it was exciting. I really, really cared.
Apart from the glaring fact that Barbie was an absolutely terrible movie. The plot made no sense, everyone in it was unlikeable and stupid, and the message was so clumsily shoved in your face it was unbearable. Its entire shtick depended on a massive marketing campaign that sold a combination of nostalgia for a toy with faux-feminism for people without enough brain cells to actually contemplate what they’re absorbing.
Yes, I’m a cynic. But art is not propaganda. Great art shows, it doesn’t tell. Barbie was feminist in the most clumsy, thoughtless, narrow-minded sense of the word, the kind that actually does nothing good for anyone except make its creators a lorry load of cash because, shock horror, Hollywood doesn’t actually have morals, nor do they have a clue anymore what art or cinema is or could be.
Right now my BBC news feed is full of celebrities turning up on the red carpet in ridiculous dresses being photographed so we can all fawn over what they’re wearing, waiting to queue up and be congratulated by each other, receiving “everyone wins” goodie bags worth $170,000, before no doubt receiving their awards and talking about love or justice or some political issue they think will make them look good.
Does anyone still care? Perhaps less so, Oscars viewership has dropped somewhat. The oscars in 2021 was its lowest ever, which perhaps coincided with the degree to which the covid pandemic made its shameless self congratulation so transparently appalling. The homeless were ejected from Union station and out of sight so the actors could turn up, receive goodie bags worth that year $250,000 and lecture the lockdown confined public. Jessica Chastain stood in a Gucci dress and gave a Best Actress speech about love, telling everyone they were “unconditionally loved for the uniqueness that is you”.
Who by, remains unclear. The benefit of evoking “love” in such a setting is it doesn’t actually have to mean anything. Such platitudes are said for the same reason Chastain put on a Gucci dress, it looks good and it has nothing whatsoever to do with sacrifice.
Yet the transparency fades as things slump back to normal and Prospero’s magic falls over us again. It is strange that in a time where we are so often obsessed with inequality that Hollywood gets a strange kind of pass, justifying itself with occasional contrived controversies about diversity or apparently feminist movies. The absurd wealth of actors and actresses, the bizarre other-world of red carpets and award shows that project a strata of people who live lives beyond the imaginations of most people in the world yet act as if they speak on their behalf is preposterous. This is not the kind of success that authorises the possibility of success for those beneath, it is the kind that must maintain itself with a sham, maintain its separation, the kind of world designed to keep things exactly the way they are.
Now shut up, scroll through the tweets about what Zendaya is wearing and wait for Barbie 2. It’s coming, I guarantee it.