Oscars: When Reality Diddles the Dream Factory

The Ultimate Weapon – The Negative Campaign

With a very few exceptions, Oscar has proven to be pretty much of a coward when it comes to controversy. At the first sign of trouble, he ducks into the sand. Here are the three most infamous examples:

1941 was the year that, arguably, the greatest film ever made debuted. Orson Welles Citizen Kane revolutionized both cinematic narrative and technology. Unfortunately, politician and media magnate William Randolph Hearst, on whose life the film was loosely inspired, did not see it that way. He used all of his powers to bad mouth the film, prevent its release, and even tried to destroy the negatives. He set his flying monkeys – gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper – to slander everything and everyone involved with the film. The film was expected to win most of its nine nominations, but block voting by Hearst minions left it with a single award for writing.
The gasp heard ‘round the world occurred in 2006 when a befuddled Jack Nicholson opened the Best Picture envelope and announced, “Crash.” Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain had accumulated a phenominal cache of honors in its run up to Oscar night, but homophobia reared its ugly head. Has-been veterans such as Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine slammed the film about “gay cowboys” and mainstream ultrabland critic Gene Shalit accused one of the film’s characters as being a portrayal of a sexual predator (for which he later apologized) . The right wing media went nuts, taking their on-air criticism to the edge of obscenity and beyond with terms like “Fudgepack Mountain”. When enough AMPAS voters chose to bravely and honorably duck and cover, the film’s fate was sealed. Crash, indeed.
Six years later, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty would become 2012s best reviewed film of the year, according to Metacritic, but it encountered controversy before filming even began that was relentless up to – even beyond – the Oscars. The Conservative Right claimed it was politically biased while the Liberal Left shat themselves thinking that the film – sight unseen as yet – endorsed torture. Members of Congress alleged the filmmakers stole access to classified information and demanded investigations into the matter that were later dropped. What does all this have to do with filmmaking? Absolutely nothing, but the die was cast. Zero Dark Thirty won a single Oscar, for Best Sound, in a tie with the James Bond potboiler, Skyfall.

What Will Be the Story in 2018?

You can apply any one of these templates to many Oscar contests over the years, but which will apply this year? We already have some negative campaigns happening in social media against – what a coincidence – the two perceived front-runners – Del Toro has been accused of stealing his story for The Shape of Water and suggestions of racism have been leveled at Three Billboards. With last year’s win by Moonlight, some (enough, probably) will feel that they did their civic duty last year – two birds / one stone – and take Call Me by Your Name and Get Out from serious consideration.

Nolan’s multi-layered and immersive Dunkirk was probably viewed by enough voters on tablets and phones to be neither, and therefore easily dismissed, something the director has gotten used to. The cause célèbre flavor-of-the-moment is the #metoo, so will the Academy use this to try momentum and try to make amends for past transgressions? Perhaps they will, but only if they feel safe and secure in doing so.