Monday 3/28/22
If you care about film, I don't know why you'd care about the Oscars. Or maybe I should say if you have any knowledge about or appreciation of film. There are exceptions, but the way this works is the most middling product wins the awards. The films that won't last, that are not imbued with life. Mediocrity prevails. The unmemorable. Great films that will always be around don't win. The best movies don't win. They never have, for the most part. Citizen Kane, Duck Soup, Bride of Frankenstein, The Searchers, Out of the Past, It's a Wonderful Life, Star Wars, Snow White,The Wizard of Oz, Vertigo, Rio Bravo.
If you make films, you don't want to win an Oscar. It's a badge of mediocrity. It's the stamping of a footnote. Sure, it can be your thing after, and opens up opportunities, but wouldn't it be better to do that with actual great art and entertainment? The same goes for the Grammys. If you win Oscars or Grammys, I don't want anything to do with your work, because I know the chances are very small that it has any real value. For the Oscars, what wins is usually this middle-of-the-road drama that is quite safe, but purports to have more depth than it actually does. Smoke and mirrors death. A picture that could cause no offense because it engenders no real feelings or response. A "feel good" vibe that is usually tacky can help. If the best works get anything, it'll be a secondary award--for special effects or whatever. Editing. Screenplay.
So why do people talk about it? People would talk about the shape of fecal logs, and post about the shape of fecal logs, if it's what everyone else was doing. It's the belonging--people want to be able to feel like they're part of a discussion. What is being discussed doesn't matter. They want to pretend they're a film expert with their voice counting as much as anyone's. They want to use that ass voice, which we've talked about in these pages--the voice sourced from the ass, that one pretends is authoritative, and is able to do so because more and more in our world, people know less and less, and using the ass voice is current society's religion--the ass voice is the new god. That's why people increasingly resent people who do know--the few of them that remain--because knowledge is the enemy of the ass voice. They want to do their comedy routine on social media, cracking wise with their awful jokes. They want to see a response to their comments, which usually takes the form of people just as empty as they've become hitting the like button and doing their own bad jokes, which is what validation now is for most people. We don't have friends, we don't have love, we don't have connection. These things--in their true states--require choices and actions we are increasingly less capable of, or that we've turned away from because that's what everyone else has done, and it is easier--or so we think--to go along with the trends, themes, the downward roll, and pack, than be a person. We prefer the pretense of these things than the actuality of these things. We have the ass voice and the unchallenged, unexamined existence, because to look at it too closely, and who we are, what we really have and don't have, would be too much for us to face, bear, and do something about.
Today those jokes are about Will Smith. Not one is funny, not a one will be funny. What I would suggest is instead of spending any time on the Oscars, watch the films I mentioned above. Or some great film you haven't seen. Watch it with the family. Your significant other. Discuss it. Have a real experience of consequence. Do that instead for two hours.
I am not trying to slam people for watching a show and partaking of the buzz. Making the buzz. But so many people complain about being bored, and many more are bored, suffering from interminable ennui. Grasping in life. Rattling around inside of empty lives. Hitting refresh on the screen over and over and over again just to pull in something new that is not really new. What I am endeavoring to get across is that you have a choice. You can exert control. The more richness you bring into your life, and the more richness you experience, the richer your life becomes, the more richness you in turn can give to others. And that happens with things of this nature. When it happens with you, it can rub off on other people. You can help that to happen. The more that happens, the more the world is uplifted. The richer it becomes. Yes, it's incremental, but that doesn't mean it's not real, and it's not noticeable.
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