Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Netflix company we’ve been lately been catching up with the modern cinema. Not so much that we’ve seen any of the pictures nominated for prizes at Sunday’s big award show, but enough to remind us why we had lost interest in the movies.
We’ll not mention the name of Sunday’s big award show because its legal staff is notorious for sending out threatening letters to anyone who does so without affixing the little registered trademark sign, they’re equally touchy about the familiar nickname for the gold statuettes they hand out, and there is no sense in provoking the wrath of a Hollywood lawyer. If they want to claim a proprietary right to the word “award” we will resist, regardless of how many letters they write, but otherwise it just doesn’t seem worth the bother.
The last time we took an avid rooting interest in these awards was all the way back in 1969, when the betting favorites in the best actor category were John Wayne for his performance as the heroic rugged individualist Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit” and Dustin Hoffman for his performance as pitiable would-be pimp Ratso Rizzo in “Midnight Cowboy.” Wayne was by then a legendary figure of the golden years of American moviemaking, Hoffman was at the time a counter-cultural icon, and their competition rather neatly symbolized not just the vast generation gap between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood, but also the battles being waged on the streets at the time between the old America and the new America. Even then, we knew which side we were on.
The Duke won the statuette, a victory that still elicits a smile, but Ratso Rizzo easily won the future of movies. Since that time Hollywood’s output has, on the whole, championed the ‘60s counter-culture’s view of capitalism, religion, sexual propriety, America’s role in the world, and just about everything else, even cowboys. The old values of the black-and-white era still sneak into release from time to time, and always seem to turn a tidy profit, but the vast majority, and ones that always seem to win the most awards, but the vast majority of movies make it clear that Hollywood is still on the anti-establishment side.
They are the establishment now, and they have the lawyers to prove it, but despite their famously ironic sensibility they don’t seem to grasp the irony. Come Sunday night they’ll strut majestically down a red carpet, resplendent in rare jewels and haute couture, cameras from around the world capturing their gorgeous faces and elegant gestures, all hoping that they’ll win a golden statuette and a chance to declare their solidarity with the “99 percent” in an acceptance speech, blissfully confident they’ll be spared when the guillotines are rolled out for the hated 1 percent.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 