I actually couldn't make it through the whole broadcast. The choices and the winners made me feel like I was in Upside-Down-World. And it was boring and superficial.
The thing about awards bodies is that they used to be rare and were based on quality, not popularity. Most of the time, the Oscar winners made sense, though the discrimination against women and people of color was always there and rarely controversial, though it should have been.
I haven't seen Parasite but I want to. I've missed a lot of movies because I live way, way, way below the poverty line, so I have almost no entertainment budget. I mentioned before that I spent a lot of money to see Ford V. Ferrari in IMAX, and it was completely worth it. But I wanted to see Honeyboy, which will soon come out on Prime, and I joined Prime specifically for the video feed. I'm looking forward to it, and it is one of those films directed by a woman who should have been nominated everywhere. The other film I wanted to see by a woman director was A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood by the brilliant Marielle Heller. But I can't stand Mr. Rogers! Argh! He always seemed so phony & unimaginitive, I didn't even want my toddler to watch him. But I didn't forbid it. The fact that I'd sit through a movie about him is a testament to my respect for Marielle.
I hated Crazy Rich Asians and am glad I didn't spend cinema money to see it. Talk about fake hype! It was racist and demeaning. I don't need to watch more sad, futile, violent movies. I've already had enough of that in my actual life, and in movies, the topics are oversaturated. That's why Marriage Story, for me, sucked. I already had all those fights and met all those people and I don't want to live it again.
But remember my never-spoken snappy comeback I owe you? I was talking to someone about your comment that the reason women directors lagged behind males is because they don't often make movies that men like. I didn't think very deeply about that statement because it seemed to be the right explanation. But the woman I was talking to about it said, "Oh, so, men need to be pleased by women all the time, and if they don't please men, they don't count?" Uh-oh. She's right. Semantically the message there is about men believing they should be pleasured by women and if they don't, men won't pay attention.
I can't be hard on you about that because, as I said, it seemed true. But it's wrong and the way you can test its veracity is to use racism instead of sexism to suss it out. "I, a white person, won't see movies by black directors because they don't appeal to my white interests." Awkwardly said, but you get it, I'm sure. Most people don't realize that sexism is as bad as racism or anti-Semitism because women, from the dawn of time, have been property of men and in that role, have been abused, raped, killed, decapitated, chained, imprisoned, forced into labor, traded and sold to other men, etc. It's been like that ever since Eve took the fall for eating the apple. Women are the cause of all sin, so they are punished by painful childbirth. It actually says that in Genesis.
I went a little over the top just to make my point. I'm just as ingrained with sexism as anyone else, because I've been conditioned since I was born, and it takes enormous effort to think differently.
You know the riddle about the father and son who got in a crash and were taken to the local hospital, where the father died and the son was in need of emergency surgery? The doctor walked in and said, "I cannot operate on my own son!" What? But I thought the father died in the wreck.... oh.... wait a minute.
The surgeon was his mother.
Duh.
We have a long way to go and we might not even have enough time to make it.
