Oscar Gets it Wrong!

I'm stunned . . . so stunned, I'm turning the keyboard over to someone else, featuring my first guest blogger—the Cnslr:

Matty may be gobsmacked about Crash winning for Best Picture, but I am not. I understand how thousands of voting members of the Acadamy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could have chosen a mediocre, self-important, film out of a field of other, stronger, contenders. It's because they are stupid and shallow.

Let me explain. Crash takes an important social issue, racism, and reduces it to strident polemics. It strategically (and in my opinion, manipulatively) places characters in opposition to one another based on race and socioeconomic position and then moves them around to "crash." Because two of the characters are black professionals and racist in their own way, the audience gets the message that this is a deep film, unflinching in its depiction of the universality of the problem (actually, it just makes white people feel like it's ok to be racist). The non-linear storytelling and editing cuts give the Academy another pretext to honor the film; it makes it look more cutting edge. All the storylines are predictably resolved, as tied up at the end of the 100 minutes as any sitcom resolution. What do you know, the racist white guy behaves nobly, while the righteous new recruit finds himself succumbing to his baser instincts.

It's those moments as well as the topic itself that caused the film to win. Hollywood can feel like it's tackled an important social issue and handled it with grit and realism and art. It makes the people who see it and the people who voted for it feel like they've been part of something meaningful, like they've actually had to think about something, when in actuality they've been bludgeoned over the head with others' opinions and led to a conclusion. "Look at us. We're not afraid to be controversial. We are Artists. We reflect society. We are important."

Oh, please.