Although I found the Academy Awards nauseatingly self-congratulatory this year, it was a remarkable year and all 5 of the top nominated films, were, for once, genuinely good films. Almost all were all brilliant attacks on what George Lakoff calls the 'strict father' crowd (in his Don't Think of an Elephant). Go Hollywood! No, seriously - they were a really brilliant statement of what's wrong with America, but wrapped into a nice palatable screen experience. I swear to god, it almost makes me believe in art again.
Brokeback Mountain of course was the leading weapon in the Academy's arsenal. For the strict father folks, two men can't love each other - it's a defacto impossibility. Even suggesting that two men could love each other flies in the face of everything precious about America, and strikes at the heart of their notion of masculinity. [My personal theory is that a crisis of masculinity is actually driving a lot of what's been going on recently - both in the 'culture wars' and in our government's positions in foreign affairs. More on this soon, but read Faludi's Stiffed in the meantime.] Good Night and Good Luck and Munich, I'm convinced, are both films about today's US government, cleverly disguised as a period piece and a film about another country. Munich is particularly sneaky. Spielberg could never make a film about a US government assassination team - Americans would never go to see it - but hey, make it about Israelis, and we'll line up. Doubting the government and it's motives, particularly calling attention to its hypocrisy, is firmly in Lakoff's camp. Crash was pretty ambitious too, in its examination (among other things) of privilege. Hey wait -- the playing field is not level, what do you mean? Of course it is - this is America! [I actually found Capote to be the most conventional of the films - basically a film about art, it was a fine film, but not political like the rest.]
