The 86th annual Academy Awards ceremony aired last night, and a billion viewers around the world struggled to stay awake. The show had a notably slow pace, with more time for introduction clips and acceptance speeches and less “Isn’t Hollywood Grand?” foofaraw (which, to be fair, a lot of people say they want. I happen to really like the foofaraw). Ellen DeGeneres’s hosting was more laid back than I am hosting an Oscar-watching party, and when I take a break to hand out pizza there’s still stuff to watch on screen. And Gravity swept the technical awards, giving the overstuffed middle of the show a certain monotony.
If you fell asleep, never fear! I’ll recap for you the bullet points a feminist movie fan needs to know:
Obsession with women’s bodies and dresses on the red carpet: ongoing
This is a complicated one. Fashion is fun and Red Carpet Style is a vital component to the glamour of the Oscars. But what bugs me is men largely getting a pass from this spectacle. Pharell had to wear SHORTS with his tux on the red carpet to hit ONLY SOME of the Worst Dressed lists.
Jennifer Lawrence tripped again, “she’s so fake” backlash threat level: midnight
Jennifer: JUST WEAR FLATS.
Cishet dude wins Oscar for playing trans woman
In 30 years, this is going to be as cringeworthy as white people playing characters of color. At least I hope. Also, said cishet dude was JORDAN CATALANO, and I’ve had over a month to prepare for this inevitability and I still can’t handle it.
“Heroes” theme just as bogus as predicted
It essentially meant montages of male protagonists of movies. Being a man in a movie = being a hero. For women to be heroes, well, they have to be Norma Rae or Ellen Ripley, pretty much.
Ellen’s epic selfie breaks Twitter
(Insert 10,000 word thinkpiece on selfies and self-identity vs. self-objectification oh wait there are already a million of those and I don’t really care.)
Lupita Nyong’o wins Best Supporting Actress, continues to be perfect
Expect coverage to focus on her “beating Jennifer Lawrence” instead of her brilliant performance and deeply moving acceptance speech.
Robert Lopez joins EGOT club, with an asterisk
His Emmys are Daytime Emmys (for the music for a kids show called Wonder Pets!). I am TORN on this because my gut tells me to be a purist and only count primetime Emmys, but seeing as how daytime television is largely geared toward women and children, shouldn’t feminists champion the Daytime Emmys as an equally important award? Anyway, be sure to bring up that argument to any snobs like me who try to downgrade Robert Lopez’s EGOT.
Feminists continue to feel conflicted as Cate Blanchett champions women in film, thanks Woody Allen
Her Best Actress acceptance speech deftly compressed months of feminist agita into something short enough she didn’t get played off.
12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture. Because it was the best picture, not because of white guilt.
Ellen’s joked in her opening chit chat, “Possibility number one: 12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture. Possibility number two: you’re all racists.” I laughed. It’s got a harsh ring of truth to it. But it sets up a narrative, bolstered by Gravity‘s sweep of the technical awards and Alfonso Cuarón’s win for Best Director, that the Academy only voted 12 Years a Slave Best Picture out of some feeling of obligation. Nope. Nuh-uh. 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture because it was THE BEST PICTURE. Gravity is an astounding film and a technical marvel; it deserved its run of awards. And Best Picture/Best Director splits are not that uncommon—it’s happened six times in the last twenty years. I hoped we put this whole “HOW CAN THEY BE DIFFERENT?” conversation to bed last year with Argo, and I don’t want to see it popping up again as some way to undermine the achievement of 12 Years a Slave.
What else ruffled your feminist feathers or smoothed them back down during this year’s Oscars?
Ok, I’ll bite. You know what ruffles my feathers? This mawkish, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory lauding of a mediocre actress who was barely believable in her 30-or-so minutes on-screen. Yes, I think Lupita is gorgeous, and I hear from friends who’ve known her that she’s a truly lovely person: yay! But her acting is miserably bad (believe me, I didn’t think much of Lawrence in HUSTLE, either – the worst part of the forgettable film). While I’ll remember some elements of 12 YEARS in the years to come, they will all, 100%, be the performances of the superior male actors. Which does, somewhat, lead to the question: why is it that McQueen is so skilled with directing men, and so poor with directing women? And why must he cast entirely A-list men and entirely not-even-good-enough-to-be-on-any-list women? This is consistent with his casting in the past. Eh. Lupita is forgettable, and will be forgotten in 5 years. As will most of the films from this year. Everyone praising themselves for how wonderfully accepting they are for loving 12 Years is just blowing smoke. No one really loved that film. And there weren’t any relatable moments. It was about 45 minutes too long, and the women were all, to a word, UNEVEN. Not one of them held attention through their entire role.
Dallas was essentially a TV-movie with A-list actors. Wolf was just misogyny x3 hours. Gravity was a disgrace, essentialist and overfeminizing (they should’ve stuck with the Rodrigo Garcia co-written draft that’s floating around online). Mr. Banks reduced the female lead to a 1-dimensional, shrill harpy. Captain Phillips had the best – and only memorable – performance of the year, which didn’t even got a nom. August felt like everyone was acting in 15 different films. Roberts, surprisingly, and to her credit, came out as the best of the bunch, outshining the phoning-it-in Streep. Blue Jasmine… well, I don’t care to comment on ripoffs by pedophiles, but they might as well have called it a Streetcar Named Cate Blanchett. I mean, seriously, THESE are the “best” films of the year? Disgrace.
K I’ll bite. What exactly did you think were the best films of the year?
(I thought Lupita was excellent and you’re criticisms seem dismissive without even thinking of the time and passion that goes into making a film.)