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No Thanks, Oscar
Posted Feb 23, 2009 by Tom Jackson
Updated Feb 23, 2009 at 10:26 PM
Skipped the Academy Awards show Sunday night.
OK, that’s not 100 percent accurate. I caught the first chunk, Hugh Jackman’s opening musical number – a tribute to the nominees in overwrought song and dance – and the presentation of the best-supporting-actress award, but after that, I was outtie.
Two reasons: disinterest and principle.
The first: With the exception of “WALL-E” – I have a 9-year-old; ask me about “Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D” – I didn’t see any of the nominated films or performances, up to and including Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight.” This, despite having enjoyed, thoroughly, “Batman Begins.” But as a colleague astutely noted, how can “Knight” be considered the best movie based on a comic book if the movie isn’t suitable for the comic book’s target audience?
The second: I couldn’t see the point of risking serial eye pokes for the dubious pleasure of sitting through the glitz and glamour of cinema’s annual self-congratulatory festival. I mean, I like my family room couch and my monster-size Mitsubishi flat-screen far too much to have them inflict avoidable bad memories on their biggest fan.
Morning-after reports suggest that almost everyone – Oscar presenters and recipients alike – were generally well-behaved. No more George W. Bush to kick around, I suppose. Not that the Indians, Japanese and former captives of East Germany who dominated much of the evening were predisposed to Bush Derangement Syndrome in the first place.
Then came the best-actor Oscar and, given Hollywood’s current predilections, the only possible winner: Sean Penn, who prevailed for his portrayal of martyred San Francisco City Councilman Harvey Milk, America’s first uncloseted gay elected official.
In an uneven acceptance speech that began with an elaborate diss of Robin Wright Penn – his ex-wife and date for the evening – and eventually descended into graceless self-immolation, Penn acknowledged, in an appropriately disparaging tones, the “signs of hatred” brandished by demonstrators from Westboro Baptist Church, the whack jobs from Topeka, Kansas, infamous for showing up to rain on the funerals of U.S. service personnel killed in combat.
So far, so good. Unless, of course, you were the title character in “The Princess Bride.” But Penn then conflated the small-minded mouth-breathers from Westboro with the majority of Californians who, in November, voted down a proposal that would have promoted homosexual unions to the rarified air of traditional marriage.
One wonders if Penn ever had so much as a single conversation with an opponent of gay marriage whose position derives from moral philosophy and rational reflection, including a consideration of unintended consequences. Then one comes to his senses and realizes, “Of course not!”
Instead, astride Hollywood’s ultimate stage, Mr. Two-Time Oscar-Winner (and to think Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck got only one each, and Cary Grant never won a first) took this moment of sublime opportunity to scold Californians for their act of shame. But kick open the matrimonial door that has served civil society for five millennia, and don’t be surprised to see who lines up in front of the justice of the peace in the name of Penn’s “equal rights”: every manner of relationship known to appeal to certain consenting adults.
Rejecting that likelihood is not hate, and it’s not to be ashamed of. It’s perspective. It’s asking, OK, we do it your way, and then what? Which is pretty much the question I asked myself when choosing against witnessing, in real time, the probable outcome of enduring Hollywood’s indifference for one fellow’s sensibilities. You got to think ahead, is all I’m saying.
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Reader Comments
Por (Robert) on February 24, 2009 (Suggest removal)
Finally, someone that people actually listen to said it. Hollywood and 99.7 percent of what comes out of it is a joke, but a highly dangerous one at that. So many of our children have attempted to follow that perceived lifestyle with no thought of the unintended consequences to themselves, their families and to our way of life in America. Hollywood is not totally to blame. People make their own choices, but Hollywood and its evil twin, the liberal media, have dummied down America. I’m afraid they are not through yet.
Suggest removal