- Feb 5, 2002
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COMMENTARY: Through a Christian lens, the Oscars matter as a barometer, if not of cinematic excellence, at least of current cultural confusion.
On Sunday, March 10, the 96th Oscars ceremony will unfold in an annual ritual which is every year more remarkable for being less important to the global theatergoing audience. Starting in Hollywood’s Golden Age and for several decades thereafter, the Academy Awards were generally reckoned spectacular. But for most people today they are just an absurd and even annoying spectacle. The Academy doubled the number of Best Picture nominees a few years ago, ostensibly to make room for fan favorite films, but then filled the new slots with obscure and weird pieces mainly meant to curry favor in the creative community.
This year is no exception. Practically no one outside Beverly Hills and two streets in Manhattan’s Upper West Side are even aware of seven of the reputedly best films of the year. Seriously, who wants to watch a 3 and a half-hour broadcast of dark weirdness clips from movies you didn’t see, in between actors gushing mean-spirited political jabs? The answer is no one, and one would think the industry would learn that by now. But they can’t learn. The power they wield is too addictive.
And yet, through a Christian lens, the Oscars still matter as a barometer, if not of cinematic excellence, at least of current cultural confusion. For the 10,700 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a “good” film today is much more a moral distinction that an artistic one, but the prevailing Academy conscience is a self-contradictory patchwork quilt — a testimony to the mess that happens in the arts when they are separated from God.
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
On Sunday, March 10, the 96th Oscars ceremony will unfold in an annual ritual which is every year more remarkable for being less important to the global theatergoing audience. Starting in Hollywood’s Golden Age and for several decades thereafter, the Academy Awards were generally reckoned spectacular. But for most people today they are just an absurd and even annoying spectacle. The Academy doubled the number of Best Picture nominees a few years ago, ostensibly to make room for fan favorite films, but then filled the new slots with obscure and weird pieces mainly meant to curry favor in the creative community.
This year is no exception. Practically no one outside Beverly Hills and two streets in Manhattan’s Upper West Side are even aware of seven of the reputedly best films of the year. Seriously, who wants to watch a 3 and a half-hour broadcast of dark weirdness clips from movies you didn’t see, in between actors gushing mean-spirited political jabs? The answer is no one, and one would think the industry would learn that by now. But they can’t learn. The power they wield is too addictive.
And yet, through a Christian lens, the Oscars still matter as a barometer, if not of cinematic excellence, at least of current cultural confusion. For the 10,700 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a “good” film today is much more a moral distinction that an artistic one, but the prevailing Academy conscience is a self-contradictory patchwork quilt — a testimony to the mess that happens in the arts when they are separated from God.
Continued below.
The Academy Awards: Absurd but Still Relevant
COMMENTARY: Through a Christian lens, the Oscars matter as a barometer, if not of cinematic excellence, at least of current cultural confusion.
