News Feature - Oscar Fallout

The 78th Annual Academy Awards wrapped up Sunday night, and amidst all the glamour and fanfare, all the comedy and the montages, all the successful and the hopeful, the awards were given out in style. Some of the awards were justified, some were anybody's guess, and some shocked the entertainment industry.

George Clooney's win for Best Supporting Actor (one of the three awards he was nominated for), the first award of the evening, put the writing on the wall, which he spelled out when his acceptance speech started out as "All right, so I'm not winning for Director". Clooney was gracious in his acceptance, and started the night out on the right foot. The rest of the night flowed smoothly under the hilarious and punctuated comedy of host Jon Stewart.

As the night went on, the "anybody's guess" categories delivered only mild surprise with their winners: Best Supporting Actress went to Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener, and Best Actress was Reese Witherspoon in Walk The Line. For the men, Capote's Philip Seymour Hoffman took home the honors of Best Actor. Best Director went to, no surprise, Ang Lee for his work on Brokeback Mountain. And, of course, Best Picture went to Brokeba…Crash?

That's right. Crash. It came as a wild surprise to everyone, including the cast members of the movie. And, if you've seen both, you could probably go either way. Fans may have been going crazy for the gay cowboy movie, but critics were raving about Paul Haggis' Crash from the minute it made it to screen. The big problem is that fans of Brokeback Mountain don't like the fact they lost, and have been crying out "homophobia" to everyone that will listen. People claim that the Academy isn't progressive enough to accept the sensual, yet overtly homosexual, content offered up by Brokeback.

The sad part about all of this isn't that one movie won while many thought another movie should have won. It comes down to the mentality of the attacks on Crash from the supporters of Brokeback Mountain. During the 2004 Presidential campaign, President Bush used to say you are either for the war or against the troops, and there's no middle ground. As Roger Ebert says on his website, "The nature of the attacks on Crash by the supporters of Brokeback Mountain seem to proceed from the other position: "Brokeback" is better not only because of its artistry but because of its subject matter, and those who disagree hate homosexuals".

Perhaps the merits of the movie Crash weren't adequately discussed among these circles of Hollywood. The Canadian director that brought a fresh look to racism on the streets of Los Angeles and in its police force, showing in a cinematically astounding style what we don't want to see. No one is taking away from Brokeback Mountain as a film, and, in fact, it won Best Adapted Screenplay over the likes of Capote, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence and Munich.

Maybe the Academy does have to look at how they judge films. Maybe they have to reconsider how they nominate these films, since box office successes like King Kong, Batman Begins and Sin City didn't make the cut. But, as Indiantelevision.com points out, "only 38.8 million people watch(ed) the show. Except for 2003 when 33 million viewers tuned in to see Chicago taking the best-picture award -- the Oscars hadn't dipped below 40 million viewers since 1987". So, perhaps the biggest problem facing the Academy isn't which movie wins Best Picture. Maybe no one cares.