Good and Bad #2: Academy Awards, CODA, Cincinnati Art Museum
Good and Bad #2: Academy Awards, CODA, Cincinnati Art Museum
What do terms like "historical" and "progress" mean when they're used by cultural institutions?
Two nights ago, at a ceremony meant to celebrate achievements in filmmaking, a surprising altercation between an actor and a comedian stole the show. The act of violence—a slap across the face—itself is not particularly interesting, but its role in the evening and its ensuing discourse is worth thinking about.
An awards ceremony is a production, an act of entertainment that to some degree eclipses the works it's meant to celebrate. Even as I write this piece, I struggle to recall the award that the comedian was giving out, or whether he was even announcing one. My partner remarked as we watched the proceedings that the actor would be remembered more for that moment than for winning the award for Best Actor, which happened shortly after. From The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times to CNN and Twitter, the entire night has been framed primarily by that event. Was it ever really about the awards? And if so, what do those awards mean?
The Academy Awards is a self-contained entity, a snapshot of how Hollywood grasps itself at any given moment. Despite the claims of Academy members, cultural critics, and people on Twitter, no real progress is possible within the Academy, because no real progress is possible today outside of it. The Academy and its fans love to point out which awards “make history,” which is what it’s called when the awards ceremony temporarily aligns with the social trends in American politics. An “historical” event within the Academy usually means that somebody from a marginalized community has won an award; it’s considered even more powerful when the win is an upset over a more traditional nominee (who is meant to represent the status quo). The meaning we’re told to infer from the “historical” award is “progress.” But where does the progress lead? The culture industry’s logic instantly converts “progress” into currency, whether it be cash from ticket sales, shares and likes on Twitter, think pieces in prestigious magazines, or word of mouth at the water cooler. It is all simply content, and self-perpetuating.
To me, a much more interesting event from this year’s Oscars was that CODA, a completely average film that should have played on Hallmark or Disney, won the award for Best Picture over favorites The Power of the Dog and Belfast. I didn’t dislike CODA—in fact, I enjoyed it—but there’s no denying that it was one of the least impressive films up for the award. The fact that it’s considered an incredible achievement in the craft of filmmaking shows the Academy’s hand here: the film was conventional in nearly every way, and its writing was mediocre at best, especially for Marlee Matlin, who, despite being the most well known actor in the film, played its most cliche character. Troy Kotsur’s Best Supporting Actor win was warranted—he was excellent in the film, and I look forward to seeing more of him.
One interesting thing about the film was its labor subplot: the mostly-deaf Rossis are a fishing family who rely on their work to survive; ironically, they can’t legally fish without the presence of Ruby—the only hearing member of the family—on the boat. Naturally, she wants to pursue singing, and eventually betrays the family by failing to show up to work (on the exact day the Coast Guard is observing their boat!). The operation is thus shut down by the government, so the father forges his own union of fishermen based around what they all consider to be fair wages (the previous foreman was depicted as being unfair). It’s something of a missed opportunity to explore the deeper relationship between labor and the arts, ultimately settling as a fairly rote film about teenage independence. On that note, the rest of the movie—based around the premise that Ruby decides she wants to become a singer and almost immediately becomes good enough to get into Berklee College of Music, where she performs “Both Sides Now” in a cloying audition—is pretty straightforward. It is not in any way more remarkable than The Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, Dune, or even King Richard, which is another very conventional but still quite enjoyable movie. Though CODA won the award for Best Picture, the real winner was the Academy itself.
Earlier this weekend, I attended a wedding at the Cincinnati Art Museum. There, a charming ceremony was mostly partitioned off from exhibits, instead taking place inside a long corridor comprising the entrance lobby, an attractive hallway, and one of the museum’s main foyers. Visible above the bar, where Jack Daniel’s and conventional Cabernet Sauvignon were served, was a massive, purple Dale Chihuly sculpture, which I must admit was beautiful. Running the walls near the ceiling, surrounding the Chihuly and bathed in its purple glow, was a banner of significant historical events meant, I assume, to remind patrons that history exists*. Listed at various points were entries like “A-Bomb 1945,” “Mark Rothko 1982,” “E.T. 1982,” and “First Electric Lighting of The Museum 1905.” J.F.K’s assassination was also commemorated, though the entry only said “J.F.K. 1963.” I remember remarking to my partner that it was funny that the film E.T. and the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were considered equally historically significant in the eyes of the cosmetic. We weren’t invited to consider their meaning or relationship, only to remember that they happened.
Though claiming to be the registries of it, institutions like the Academy and the Cincinnati Art Museum barricade themselves off from history itself; all of the events, works, and references contained within, from J.F.K.’s assassination, Chihuly’s sculptures, and the atom bomb to CODA, E.T., and the shocking awards ceremony blowup, exist on the same cultural plane, not one of progress, but a flat loop of regression, a cinema reel rigged to play over and over until somebody bothers to turn it off. Unfortunately, we are all in the audience, the stage is a mirror, and nobody’s in the projection booth.
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*After publishing this essay, it was brought to my attention that the banner in the Cincinnati Art Museum lobby is actually part of a series by artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, not a decoration by the museum. The fact that it caused this kind of confusion suggests that it is to some degree a successful and provocative work—one that certainly brings up complex questions and invites deeper thought. I look forward to the opportunity to further consider the work of Gonzalez-Torres, and hope to address his art in a future column.