2020 Oscars Review
This post was written by Emmanuel Carrillo.
The reason why most people dislike the Oscars is that it’s basically just the same rich celebrities congratulating each other each year. But if last night is an indication of anything, this tradition is changing. We saw celebrity after celebrity espousing discontent toward the current systems of power, each speech ending in applause. Honestly, I don’t believe that the Academy (of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences) actually cares about diversity. They definitely do care about appearing as though they care, which they did a great job of last night. There was a lot of performative wokeness, but luckily a lot of it was genuine too. We saw Janelle Monae open with dancers dressed like characters from snubbed movies, Joaquin Phoenix emotionally quote his late brother while addressing the bonds of justice, and we even had Marx quoted by documentarian Julia Reichert. Despite my cynicism toward the Academy, I do believe that the people actually making and acting in movies—not the suits funding them—are starting to consciously make room for different voices. Frankly, these are the people who really matter in changing the tide, the creative people who actually craft films.
There was one glaring failure of the night for me: Toy Story 4 won animated feature. I didn’t watch it, so my opinion is…but hear me out. First off, animation is perpetually misunderstood by the powers in Hollywood (just google it; the Academy voters have almost no knowledge of animation). I personally think that Klaus should’ve won because a) it’s a unique story about a universal character b) they literally invented a new form of animation for this movie 3) it isn’t just another Pixar sequel. It’s time for a new generation of animators to take the reins of the animation industry. CG animation was like “totally rad” back in ’98 but today it’s lost its wow factor, becoming the go-to style of large studio animation. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s become a crutch, an easy way to say, “that is good animation because it looks lifelike.” There is so much more to animation than just being lifelike, and the Academy has trouble realizing this.
I honestly didn’t see a lot of the movies up for awards, but I did see Parasite, and it deserved the recognition it got. I think Parasite showed Hollywood that there are foreign directors making incredibly interesting things that Americans will actually go out and watch. These films—Parasite in particular—tackle issues that are present in our American society, and they often portray these problems better than our beloved Hollywood. See, we in the US have set Hollywood as the gold standard and have unknowingly lost out on so much because of it. Don’t get me wrong, Hollywood is great at what it does, but most of what it does is crank out a product made to reach a certain profit margin. There are certainly plenty of exceptions and even whole generations (the ‘70s) where the script is flipped, but this is not the norm. For the last twenty or so years, Hollywood has very much been a machine, the plus side of which is that it’s made room for a boom in indie filmmaking. But I think that what we ought to realize is that Bong Joon Ho was right in his interview a few weeks ago when he said that the Oscars are very much a local event meant for Hollywood stars. Again, this is not bad in itself, but it overlooks the huge array of films being made outside Hollywood, films made by talented people who don’t feel like they need to follow a set formula for success.
These foreign filmmakers can remind us of what cinema really is, like when Bong Joon Ho lifted the façade off Hollywood for a second at the Oscars. He thanked Martin Scorsese for inspiring him as a film student in a very real and humble moment. You see this and realize, “Oh, these are just a bunch of creative people hanging out and complimenting each other’s art.” And yeah, they are, and maybe that’s all this has to be.
**PS Florence Pugh should’ve won Best Actress for her role in Midsommar, but the Academy still doesn’t take horror seriously (a topic for another time).
