Academy Awards

The Hap-Happiest Season of All

I don’t care what Andy Williams tells you, this is the most wonderful time of the year. In the morning hours of Jan. 22, while most of my students were still sleeping, I was glued to a television set watching Forest Whitaker and Sid Ganis reveal the 2009 Oscar nominees. My interest in the Oscars can best be described as an obsession.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll spend hours in the theater, and I’ll scour Mike’s Video, Blockbuster, Redbox, and Netflix for the latest Oscar-nominated releases. I’ll study the Oscar odds published in Entertainment Weekly, and I’ll make lists of the films I need to see.  I’ll enter Oscar contests that pit my prognosticating skills against those of my friends and family, and I’ll run contests of my own in my classes. The students who pick the most winners will be awarded extra credit points. It’s safe to say that the Academy Awards will dominate the next several weeks of my life.  (As an Eagles fan, I have little choice in the matter this year.)

I know the criticisms. Detractors will charge that the awards are mostly political, that they often recognize the best advertising campaign rather than the best achievement, that the Academy itself is an arm of the industry that uses the awards ceremony to encourage further patronage of Hollywood films, that it’s difficult to judge whose work is the best when the films and roles themselves are so different, and that the best films and most groundbreaking work are often ignored by the Academy. That's an assertion that seems to be newly validated this year with the Academy’s decision to not even nominate Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” for Best Original Song.

And yet none of these critiques dulls my interest in the awards. On the day of the ceremony, I’m likely to plunk myself down in front of the TV and start watching E! as soon as their Oscar Preview Show comes on. I’ll stock the fridge and freezer with all my favorite unhealthy foods, and I’ll proceed to listen to every acceptance speech and watch every video interlude during the ceremony.

This kind of passion and love, especially for something like the movies, is often derided in academic circles. Such emotional responses are seen to cloud rational thought, making individuals easy prey for the whims of the industry. But that seems too cynical to me. The movies are a mass art, accessible by a wider proportion of the global population than most other arts, and they carry with them the potential for better understanding--of ourselves, of others, of our relationships, of our place in history and of the difficult issues we confront in our politics and our lives. The Oscars don’t always get the specific films or performances right, but their idea (even if it is a marketing ploy) that movies are more than just entertainment, and that they have the power to transform the way we see the world is something to be celebrated.

Make no mistake about it. This is the most wonderful time of the year, because it is the moment when the movies get the critical attention they deserve.

Onto this year’s nominations …
Overall, the Academy has done a great job with this year’s nominations, but their failure to nominate Springsteen is a slight that won’t soon be forgotten by fans like me. If ‘The Boss’ is willing to write a song for your movie, you can bet it will be Oscar-worthy.

On the day the nominations were announced, I was so certain “The Wrestler” would be nominated that when it wasn’t I kept checking Oscars.com thinking they hadn’t gotten around to listing it on the Web site. Alas, the song failed to make the cut. Fan sites like backstreets.com suddenly featured in-depth analyses of Academy by-laws and voting rules, searching in vain for an explanation for this disrespectful move on the Academy’s part.

From my perspective, Bruce can still win if Mickey Rourke takes home the golden guy for his portrayal of Randy the Ram in the film. After all, it was Rourke who called Springsteen to request a song. That means without Rourke, there would be one less Bruce Springsteen song in the world, and Oscars have been awarded for less of an achievement than that.

Meanwhile, fans of The Dark Knight are both ecstatic and disappointed. Who isn’t cheering the nomination of Heath Ledger for his role as “The Joker”?  Ledger makes his psychotic terrorist simultaneously repulsive and compelling. It’s a great tribute to an acting career that was far too short. But the film’s failure to be nominated for Best Picture has irked some, especially those voters on imdb.com who have rated the film the fifth best motion picture of all time. (That would seem to be overstating its quality just a little bit.) 

Granted, The Dark Knight is not the kind of film that is usually nominated for such honors, but some hoped its popularity and the fact that it raised the bar for all comic book movies would land it in the category. That said, the film was nominated for eight Oscars, and I expect it will win several of them. At the 2000 Oscars, another groundbreaking, sci-fi film was nominated for four awards, and it took home every one of them. That was The Matrix, and The Dark Knight is in the same league, though I doubt it will win each of its eight categories.

The bigger slight for Best Picture goes to WALL-E, which may well be the actual best film from the past year. It is a stunning achievement, especially since almost half of the film is more or less a silent movie. WALL-E was nominated for six, including Best Animated Feature, which it should win hands-down. But being nominated for Best Animated Feature does not disqualify a movie from being nominated for or even winning Best Picture. Many are suggesting that if Disney had staged a more aggressive marketing campaign, the film would have become only the second animated film ever nominated for Best Picture--the other being Beauty and the Beast.

I have a different solution. Invite film scholars to be members of the Academy and allow them to vote on the nominations and the awards! For years the doors of the Academy have been closed to us. If you want to stop slights like those that are currently plaguing the likes of Bruce Springsteen and WALL-E, look no further than right here! I’ll gladly devote my time to righting these wrongs and restoring dignity and honor to the Academy! It’s a tough job, but I’m willing to do it ... please. How’s that for an aggressive marketing strategy?

Jonathan Cavallero is a full-time lecturer in the College of Communications. He specializes in Italian-American images in American and international cinema, race and ethnicity in American cinema, american directors of italian descent and multiculturalism and pedagogy. He was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2007.