EMILY POLLOCK
FILM & MUSIC
Karl Marx disapproves of your capitalist Oscars party Alex Griffith, Pauline Holdsworth, and Patrick Mujunen look at the Oscars from left field
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been criticized for offering a thinly-veiled realpolitik justification for torture – distasteful, but necessary in order to protect “American values” – and as yet another example of Hollywood whitewashing American imperialism. Much like fellow nominee Argo, Zero Dark Thirty depicts the covert activities of the CIA through a rosy lens as plucky operatives fighting a murky war against a fanatical, barbaric enemy. But we shouldn’t forget the CIA’s real record: during the Cold War, the CIA was directly responsible for assassinations, coups, genocidal right-wing militias, and puppet dictatorships, and is no better-behaved today—no matter how much reactionary filmmakers try to paint it as a heroic protector of “freedom” and “democracy”. Despite director Katherine Bigelow’s assertion that the film is not meant to take a particular side, it has clearly received an enthusiastic reception from a disturbingly large and bloodthirsty segment of the American population. As the helicopter carrying the blood-soaked body of Bin Laden lifts off into the sky, movie theaters have reportedly burst into applause, while audiences have flooded the internet with racist comments about Arabs and Muslims. Many will argue that the film is not meant to be realistic, but the very fact that a chest-beating imperial revenge fantasy like Zero Dark Thirty has received
such widespread acclaim suggests that the Obama administration’s attempts to rehabilitate the use of torture and other illegal practices have been extraordinarily successful. Since Hurt Locker, Oscar has veered right in its best picture choices. The King’s Speech? Defense of traditional British monarchy and masking disability to fit class expectations. The Artist? Tries to wind back the cinematic clock 80 years. It’s funny that the winners everyone shittalks for being too crowd-pleasing are actually the more radical of the bunch. In Gladiator, Maximus sees his patriarchal world order fall away before him as he joins the slave class; The Departed put organized crime and the police force next to each other in a lineup and weeded out their shared culture of violence; Lord of the Rings—well, actually that story is pretty damn conservative. As for “underdog” Slumdog Millionaire, it is true that Danny Boyle hadn’t been in the running since Trainspotting, but Deepa Mehta, Dibakar Banerjee, and other Indian directors are hardly ever nominated. Though this year’s nominee Beasts of the Southern Wild is an aesthetically gorgeous film and a thought-provoking exploration of how we imagine disaster and federal disaster relief, it’s also been slammed by critics like bell hooks for appropriating Black history and experiences—a white hipster’s
take on Katrina and river-people and stuff. It’s a movie set in a community below the levee in New Orleans, faced with mythical monsters set free by climate change and the paternalism of a government which wants to “rescue” them from the dangers of their home. But though it deals with black Southern landscapes and communities, it’s pretty much exclusively imagined and directed by white Northeners. No matter which expensive film wins this year, those of you who watch the Oscars will have spent three hours watching a fancy advertisement for imperialism and designer clothes. And don’t expect it to change any time soon. After all, the revolution will not be televised.
SARAH CRAWLEY
This may come as a surprise to no one, but some of us at The Strand swing a bit to the left. We know that the Oscars already happened and that we can’t give predictions. But we’re here to prove that it really doesn’t matter who wins the Oscars, or who hosts them, because the Oscars are basically a long infomercial for the American movie industry. Specifically, for American movie elites—despite all the excited talk over the last decade of filmmaking becoming cheaper and more democratic, the Oscars remain as reactionary as ever. It’s great that Amour and Les Mis can share the same ten-nominee field, but beyond giving these movies more publicity, the expanded nomination list does nothing to change how Academy members vote. Frontrunners Argo and Lincoln, two A-list MPAA movies heavy on American patriotism (Lincoln is admittedly more subtle) were always going to be favourites. It’s always going to be Lincoln over Django, just as it was Forrest Gump over The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction. There are occasional upsets, but the media-hyped showdowns like Avatar vs. Hurt Locker don’t exactly betray divergent ideologies. Hurt Locker, despite glimpses of post-traumatic stress disorder, was essentially an action movie set in Iraq; similarly, Zero Dark Thirty is a peep show into terrorist hunting with a somewhat ambiguous ending. The film has deservedly