How is it that after 92 years the Oscars finally came up with both a telecast and a list of winners to be proud of?
Hitting the right notes, literally, for just about everything, the 2020 Oscars will probably be best remembered as the first time in history a foreign… ahem… INTERNATIONAL film won best picture.
Show tagline: PARASITE, NO HOST
Not only that, Parasite writer-director Bong Joon-ho took home THREE more Oscars for best director, best screenplay and best international (formerly foreign) film.
The hottest name in Hollywood!
And it was only a mere five decades ago when another Oscar winning writer-director, Billy Wilder, famously quipped to his cameraman:
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
That Parasite managed to touch the hearts and souls of a majority of Oscar voters is not in doubt. But what also seems clear is that the choice of a non-American film about economic inequality as the Motion Picture Academy members’ big winner was a very clear and very present way for voters to send out another message to the world. And that message is:
2020 America, and Americans, are NOT living in a bubble or behind a WALL. We are not isolationists who want to disengage with you. We, in fact, do get IT, even if it doesn’t always seem that way these days So don’t give up on us…yet.
I’m paraphrasing, of course.
In fact, I might be reaching or making this up out of whole cloth. Though truly, I don’t think so.
How I will try to think of 2019 in America
Hollywood might not literally speak for all 327 million people living in the U.S. but as an industry it is one of its chief representatives to the rest of the world. American movies reflect America to international audiences and what the Oscars choose to represent as the best of the best carries that weight.
Taken in that light the major category victories for Parasite were no small thing. No, they certainly don’t change the state of the world but, at the same time, they proclaim that things aren’t staying stagnant. If the same staid Academy that made the safe choice of Green Book as last year’s best picture is now doing a full 360 and saying a South Korean film dealing with class warfare is the gold standard, well, who knows what else is in store from any number of American industries looking to project some message to the outside of who we really are.
Don’t ever look back!
Oh yes, hope springs eternal. But then again, why not?
This message of change, or perhaps inclusion was reflected all throughout the Oscar telecast on Sunday night.
Singer-songwriter-performer extraordinaire Janelle Monae had Oscar’s best musical opening in history as she went from mock Mister Rogers garb to full blown, self-proclaimed, queer Black artist singing revamped lyrics to her 2010 tune Come Alive. Sashaying her way through a panoply of back up dancers and celebrities, she actually managed to make the Academy Awards seem hip and happening for the first time in…..well….EVER.
At one point THIS happened
But that was only one of a string of ingenious, nostalgic and just plain awe inspiring musical moments.
We had Idina Menzel belting a Disney song along with belters from more than a dozen countries in THEIR native languages.
Then there was Eminem appearing seemingly out of nowhere to rap his 2003 Oscar winning song Lose Yourself with some updated lyrics evoking the era of Trump.
OK so the song is as old as Billie Eilish, so what?
Soon Elton John was pounding on his red piano and singing the soon-to-be Oscar winning song he co-wrote with longtime lyricist partner Bernie Taupin for their autobiographical film Rocketman.
That followed twice nominated Cynthia Erivo also bringing the house down with her inspirational ballad Stand Up from her film about abolitionist Harriet Tubman, Harriet.
And her dress was PERFECTION #QueenCynthia #EGOTiscoming
Then, as a capper, we got a haunting version of the Beatles’ Yesterday sung by this year’s multi-Grammy winner, 18-year-old Billie Eilish, in memory of the many film artists we lost this past year.
And amid all of that was this quite subversive high comic moment of the evening:
Rebel Wilson and James Corden entering in the crazy train makeup and costumes from their 2019 film disaster, Cats, to give this simple introduction to the award they were tasked to present:
As cast members of the motion picture CATS nobody more than us understands the importance of good visual effects.
Proving it’s never to soon…
Certainly one could gripe about a few misfired jokes from various presenters or any number of times when any one of us knew the wrong person, or people, were standing center stage with an Oscar in their hands that we felt belonged to someone else.
Still, it is difficult to argue with what most of those who did win were trying to say in their acceptance speeches.
They rambled, but we stuck with them
Aside from thanking their immediate families, or their teams, or their friends or cast mates, almost every major speech felt like a sincere outreach to an international audience for us all to find some way come together rather than to continue to be pulled apart by the circumstances of our times.
While the ceremony theoretically honors the art and craft of film, this year’s Oscars somehow felt more like a hand extending far beyond Hollywood and the borders of the U.S. towards the rest of the world in solidarity.
PLUS This is now Oscar-winning, so really, all is right with the world
Though on second thought, perhaps it’s more like a cry from those of us within to everyone watching on the outside for…help?
notes from a chair 