Is There a Memo?

(Of course there is.) What is it with all the right wing pundits turning into movie critics? Here's one - the Virgin Ben Shapiro - making a speech about the Oscars. He's always watched em, he says, but not this year! Oh! the awful liberals have taken over Hollywood! "In recent years," Mr. Shapiro laments, "lack of quality from Hollywood has turned the Academy Awards into a special-interest-group get-together. If you're crazy, gay, have a disability or are a member of a minority race, you'll likely be nominated for an Oscar; if your film tackles a "deep social issue" (normally an issue dear to the hearts of Hollywood's liberal glitterati), you'll have an excellent shot at grabbing a gold statuette."

I'm sure this is a recent phenomenon. Before 1994 (the year 0 of this liberal revolution, apparently, having something to do with Tom Hanks in Philadelphia), the Academy Awards went to - what? well - usually - to big, important pictures about Socially Significant Events - Dances With Wolves! The Last Emperor! Gandhi! or more modestly, all those oh so serious problem pictures like Kramer vs. Kramer and Ordinary People. The Oscars are industry awards - the industry always tries to present itself in the best light, rewarding social commentary, "historical" seriousness and the like. When was it not thus? What is different now? Shapiro singles out Hilary Swank's best actress award for Boys Don't Cry and Charlize Theron's in Monster for their political correctness - but are those wins all that different than Dustin Hoffman winning in Rain Man? Good bad or indifferent, they are gimmick roles - the academy has never shied from rewarding those kinds of showy performances - how are Swank and Theron different?

I suppose it is true that Hollywood these days is more willing to put gay or lesbian characters in leading roles, drawing the story-telling attention that used to go to cancer patients or divorcees. (It remains pretty much a given that to win an acting Oscar you have to suffer.) But doesn't this increased attention to homosexuality really mean that the country as a whole is more comfortable seeing gays and lesbians on screen, identifying with gays and lesbians in films? It's hard to see how Hollywood has moved anywhere on this - if they have moved to the left, it's because the country has moved to the left, increasingly accepting the idea that gays and lesbians are human beings like everybody else. Hollywood remains more or less in the mainstream of society on this - probably, in cold fact, rather behind television, where Will and Grace, Ellen DeGeneres, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and so on, seem to be thriving, and have been for a while now.

And - before going back to plain mockery of Mr. Shapiro, I suppose I should add that recent Academy Awards winners have reflected some industrial changes in film. It seems to me that over the past couple decades, the big Hollywood studies have more and more concentrated on their blockbusters, and shifted the burden of making prestige pictures (historical films, serious dramas, social problem films) to the mini-majors and indies. The shock of independent films winning Oscars has somewhat worn off. I think it is because of the division of labor - that the kinds of films that have usually won Academy Awards are being made by "independents" now, though usually in some kind of close collusion with Hollywood proper. Unfortunately for the right wing memo readers, this doesn't seem to have a lot of political implications - the same kind of films are winning Oscars now as won in the 70s or 80s - they aren't any more politically radical now than they were then, at least not compared to the country as a whole. It's a shift that's only really interesting in an industrial sense.

Anyway, back to our intrepid Townhall columnist: reading through Shapiro's screed, I was tempted to wonder if he was telling the truth about always watching the Oscars. It doesn't sound like it - it sounds like someone sent him a list of Oscar winners, and he went to IMDB to find out what they were about, and write something shocked and outraged about them. I suppose I should take him at his word about watching the Oscars - but there's no way on earth you are going to convince me he saw more than a quarter of the films he writes about. Take this:

2000 featured the victory of repulsive anti-suburbia and pro-homosexuality hit piece "American Beauty." Of course, it beat out a film lionizing an abortionist ("The Cider House Rules") and another attacking the tobacco industry ("The Insider"). Most disturbingly, the Academy handed Hilary Swank a Best Actress Oscar for playing a transgendered biological girl murdered by a bunch of hicks.

Anyone want to bet whether he actually saw any of those films?

The rest of it is about the same. He's a clown. I admit, these recent right wing attacks on Hollywood have been interesting. They are nothing new - it's all Michael Medved has had going for him for 20 years - but they've taken an interesting turn lately. Look at the end of Shapiro's screed - some kind of snark about Brokeback Mountain not being a blockbuster is illustrated by pointing to the far better Box Office receipts for Hostel. The real comedy is this - guess which of those films our boy calls "stomach-churning"?