Dances in the Gutter of Envy
Many things have outlived their usefulness and linger around like the smell of rotting flesh. Every so often something fails to notice they died long ago...existing now as something weird and profane, lying somewhere between the respective handiwork of Baron Samedi and Rod Hull. Death does not stop them moving and indeed breeding...the awards ceremony is a case in point.
Despite their appeal shrinking like a salted snail over the years, the increasing number of the things is overwhelming. The gene pool of these things is now the size of the puddle...the chin is receding, the balls are shrinking and the teeth are bucking like a whore’s legs. Soon they will give birth to a small sack of ceremonial organs with no head or limbs and we will still be subjected to pictures of Liz Hurley getting out of a car and almost flashing her knickers. Generally on the front page of the Telegraph.
Some ceremonies, of course, are a little more venerable than the Daily Express Cute Kids In Wheelchairs Saving Distressed Kitties Bravery Awards. Last night we had the grandaddy of them all and once again the world took notice.
But the Oscars is a perpetual cycle of money rewarding money and is less relevant to everyday film-making than ever. It is Chelsea FC being gifted a bottomless well of money and then expecting warm admiration from all concerned when they win the inevitable silverware. It is the class of philosophy students who, upon graduation, discover the only job they can get is philosophy lecturer to the next generation of students. They get on with their business and we get on with ours. There is no connection with the outside world. And when people turn up at the cinema, the fun they have has nothing to do with the number of golden statues on the director’s mantelpiece.
The films that win were all pitched with the Oscar in mind and this immediately sets them aside. Think of a director crying on the desk of a Hollywood producer as he puts forward the heartbreaking concept of a child with a fashionable disability beating the odds to become President of the United States of America. Sounds terrible...but also jolly Important. So long as it sounds worthy enough it will be welcomed with open arms and then Oscar’d ‘til it bleeds.
The pitch has become a curse and many good films do not exist because they could not be summed up in a few words. Similarly, many bad films have been made because the idea of crossing thrilling film X with voguish genre film Y made a manager wet somewhere down the line. The quality of writing, characterisation and acting is irrelevant; the deal only goes down if the concept itself is saleable. But we cannot judge the what-ifs of the industry because alternate histories are entirely unpredictable. All we have are the end results -- the films dogged enough to make it over the tortuous obstacle course -- to use as a stick to beat the industry.
Wait a moment, though...good films have won Oscars and it would be idiotic to say that only low-budget independent films are worthy of our consideration. What we must realise is that the satisfaction we get from a film is barely connected to whether it wins the Oscar. There is no film in existence that everybody would agree is the most wonderful film of all time...so the award winning films are voted in by a compromising committee and this is never going to be of interest to the genuine film buff.
Damn it. I cannot quite get this right. What the hell am I trying to say here? Perhaps that the Oscar does indeed tend to go to the Good Film and the Good Actor, but the concept is capsized by the emphasis on the themes and genres that have always won Oscars before...a bad situation in which the conservatism of previous years feeds on itself and ends up throwing po-faced banality around like a misfiring muckspreader. A kind of self-imposed straightjacket.
And conservative it has been and conservative it remains, despite Hollywood being seen as some kind of evil liberal haven...a charge that would be comical if it didn’t offer a horrifying glimpse into the conservative mind. Anything they cannot control and censor and use to spread their dubious morality is labelled unnatural and therefore a target for destruction...ah, to hell with this. This kind of political mush writes itself and contributes nothing.
Well, whatever. I have little reason to jabber on about this anyway... I do not really give a damn about the Oscars for the reason I gave in an earlier paragraph; that they’re irrelevant to film-making. Why do I need to care that only Oscary films win Oscars? These are generally not the films I watch...not always, but I certainly do not need some kind of spurious stamp of approval from a bunch of Hollywood numpties before I watch a film or not.
So why even watch the ceremony if we do not choose to watch films based on whether or not they won an award? Camp value? What a pile of shit. People kidding themselves that, because they are told it has camp appeal, they are automatically going to enjoy watching it. That is Trying Too Hard and they know it. In reality the ceremony is nothing more than inane peacocking and PR masturbation in bad outfits.
In fact the whole celebrity fixation we have in this country smacks of something we have been shepherded into, rather than something we each independently decided was most fascinating... waking up one day with a sudden thought...my god! I cannot live without seeing a picture of someone who is on television in a dress that poorly emphasises part of her body! We have been force-fed more gossip-based shite than we know what to do with and we now believe that digesting uninteresting celebrity facts and pictures is as natural as breathing in and out.
Unless...the desire for seeing our supposed betters being laid low is innate...why wouldn’t you be pleased to see the King of England caught in a threesome with the Queens of Spain and France if you are a 12th century peasant downtrodden by some bastardised version of feudalism? A combination of jealously and...well, that appears to be it. Jealousy. Especially if there is a sense of unfairness about it. A king because his father was king? How unfair is that! Millionaire Beckham being paid further millions for whoring himself in some insipid cola advert? Let’s stone the fucker!
Which is only natural. Celebrities are now our betters... ubiquity has become interchangeable with status. We crave their omnipresence and then we are told they are so over and that we should start throwing the rocks. And as we chuckle into our copies of Heat we must realise that if we are happy to obsess over the downfall of others then we must have something to offer ourselves. But we prefer to force people to join us dancing in the gutter than stepping out onto the pavement.
Despite their appeal shrinking like a salted snail over the years, the increasing number of the things is overwhelming. The gene pool of these things is now the size of the puddle...the chin is receding, the balls are shrinking and the teeth are bucking like a whore’s legs. Soon they will give birth to a small sack of ceremonial organs with no head or limbs and we will still be subjected to pictures of Liz Hurley getting out of a car and almost flashing her knickers. Generally on the front page of the Telegraph.
Some ceremonies, of course, are a little more venerable than the Daily Express Cute Kids In Wheelchairs Saving Distressed Kitties Bravery Awards. Last night we had the grandaddy of them all and once again the world took notice.
But the Oscars is a perpetual cycle of money rewarding money and is less relevant to everyday film-making than ever. It is Chelsea FC being gifted a bottomless well of money and then expecting warm admiration from all concerned when they win the inevitable silverware. It is the class of philosophy students who, upon graduation, discover the only job they can get is philosophy lecturer to the next generation of students. They get on with their business and we get on with ours. There is no connection with the outside world. And when people turn up at the cinema, the fun they have has nothing to do with the number of golden statues on the director’s mantelpiece.
The films that win were all pitched with the Oscar in mind and this immediately sets them aside. Think of a director crying on the desk of a Hollywood producer as he puts forward the heartbreaking concept of a child with a fashionable disability beating the odds to become President of the United States of America. Sounds terrible...but also jolly Important. So long as it sounds worthy enough it will be welcomed with open arms and then Oscar’d ‘til it bleeds.
The pitch has become a curse and many good films do not exist because they could not be summed up in a few words. Similarly, many bad films have been made because the idea of crossing thrilling film X with voguish genre film Y made a manager wet somewhere down the line. The quality of writing, characterisation and acting is irrelevant; the deal only goes down if the concept itself is saleable. But we cannot judge the what-ifs of the industry because alternate histories are entirely unpredictable. All we have are the end results -- the films dogged enough to make it over the tortuous obstacle course -- to use as a stick to beat the industry.
Wait a moment, though...good films have won Oscars and it would be idiotic to say that only low-budget independent films are worthy of our consideration. What we must realise is that the satisfaction we get from a film is barely connected to whether it wins the Oscar. There is no film in existence that everybody would agree is the most wonderful film of all time...so the award winning films are voted in by a compromising committee and this is never going to be of interest to the genuine film buff.
Damn it. I cannot quite get this right. What the hell am I trying to say here? Perhaps that the Oscar does indeed tend to go to the Good Film and the Good Actor, but the concept is capsized by the emphasis on the themes and genres that have always won Oscars before...a bad situation in which the conservatism of previous years feeds on itself and ends up throwing po-faced banality around like a misfiring muckspreader. A kind of self-imposed straightjacket.
And conservative it has been and conservative it remains, despite Hollywood being seen as some kind of evil liberal haven...a charge that would be comical if it didn’t offer a horrifying glimpse into the conservative mind. Anything they cannot control and censor and use to spread their dubious morality is labelled unnatural and therefore a target for destruction...ah, to hell with this. This kind of political mush writes itself and contributes nothing.
Well, whatever. I have little reason to jabber on about this anyway... I do not really give a damn about the Oscars for the reason I gave in an earlier paragraph; that they’re irrelevant to film-making. Why do I need to care that only Oscary films win Oscars? These are generally not the films I watch...not always, but I certainly do not need some kind of spurious stamp of approval from a bunch of Hollywood numpties before I watch a film or not.
So why even watch the ceremony if we do not choose to watch films based on whether or not they won an award? Camp value? What a pile of shit. People kidding themselves that, because they are told it has camp appeal, they are automatically going to enjoy watching it. That is Trying Too Hard and they know it. In reality the ceremony is nothing more than inane peacocking and PR masturbation in bad outfits.
In fact the whole celebrity fixation we have in this country smacks of something we have been shepherded into, rather than something we each independently decided was most fascinating... waking up one day with a sudden thought...my god! I cannot live without seeing a picture of someone who is on television in a dress that poorly emphasises part of her body! We have been force-fed more gossip-based shite than we know what to do with and we now believe that digesting uninteresting celebrity facts and pictures is as natural as breathing in and out.
Unless...the desire for seeing our supposed betters being laid low is innate...why wouldn’t you be pleased to see the King of England caught in a threesome with the Queens of Spain and France if you are a 12th century peasant downtrodden by some bastardised version of feudalism? A combination of jealously and...well, that appears to be it. Jealousy. Especially if there is a sense of unfairness about it. A king because his father was king? How unfair is that! Millionaire Beckham being paid further millions for whoring himself in some insipid cola advert? Let’s stone the fucker!
Which is only natural. Celebrities are now our betters... ubiquity has become interchangeable with status. We crave their omnipresence and then we are told they are so over and that we should start throwing the rocks. And as we chuckle into our copies of Heat we must realise that if we are happy to obsess over the downfall of others then we must have something to offer ourselves. But we prefer to force people to join us dancing in the gutter than stepping out onto the pavement.
posted by Jamie at 6:52 PM
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