Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
![]() |
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Comments
So does this mean John Lewis should be considered a lying Uncle Tom sellout now? Just askin' (really just askin)
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 2:21am
Ralph Northam is still Governor, so John Lewis gets a mulligan.
Edit to add:
Apparently, Spike Lee almost walked out.
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 9:23am
Of course, I totally understand. It is so important that the negativity in our culture continue and that "Hollywood magic" does not promote the delusion that different individuals can ever learn to get along outside of their tribes.
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 10:48am
I'm willing to give John Lewis a pass but shouldn't he have to first apologize so we can decide if his apology is done correctly?
by ocean-kat on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 11:06am
How I see it: Spike somehow just couldn't let go of his outrage enough to support his own message of "love is all you need" a few minutes earlier. A great talent who has always had anger management issues to his own detriment. Just watching clips of him at a basketball game one can see it. Trump is an idiot about most things but is very skilled at seeing an opportunity to rile up divisions whenever he sees one: Trump accuses director Spike Lee of 'racist hit' after Oscars acceptance speech
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 11:47am
I think I found the video of Spike Lee's temper tantrum.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 12:11pm
The guy in the White House attacked Meryl Streep.
https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/818419002548568064?lang=en
Yeah, this is all on Spike Lee.
Edit to add:
Robert De Niro was more blunt than Spike
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/us/politics/trump-deniro-tweets.html
This is Trump talking to his base. Spike was polite and simply reminded people to vote.
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 12:41pm
Spike Lee was calm enough to note that if his film is competing against a film where somebody is driving, his film loses. (said with a smile).
”Do The Right Thing” lost to “Driving Miss Daisy”
“BlacKkKlansman” lost to “The Green Book”.
Edit to add:
Here is how Spike Lee ended his speech
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/2/25/18239640/spike-lee-speech-trump-tweet-oscars
Trump characterized those words a a racist hit. If you characterize Leeas an angry black man, you have fallen into Trump’s trap. Lee did not mention a Trump.
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 2:06pm
I got Spike's "joke". There's two things about it that made it a big fail in the "touche" dept.:
As oceankat points out, this egotistical and bratty kind of behavior is not unusual among artists of all types. So I expect to see it. It's a rarer thing when they are gracious towards colleagues and don't play the game like it's a winner take all sports fight. No surprise: colleagues tend to appreciate and remember those who stand out as gracious rather than egomaniacs. And guess who votes for the Academy Awards? Colleagues. As a matter of fact, I'd be willing to bet he never gets another Oscar no matter how good his future work is. And that won't be about the color of his skin.
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 5:14pm
Spike Lee was always brash and egotistical, his calls to skip school & go see Malcolm X, etc. but at the same time, yes, Driving Miss Daisy et al are pretty much the non-confrontational feel-good Uncle Tom/House N****** roles for blacks that made for pretty slim unengaging pickings until some movies like Do the RIght Thing, House Party, etc. opened it up. I can imagine Spike being pissed in '89, losing to a film that feels old and somewhat trite (not that I ever saw it, but I suspect at least 3 hankies required and some big Oprah head-nodding on great lessons learned).
And yes, Don Shirley had white lower class guys as well as black lower class guys driving his car - and he didn't take lessons on eating fried chicken from them (he'd lived in the south, as if that's a requirement) - part of the point of his LIFE was that he was a refined, classically trained musician who didn't behave like a Charlie Parker hooked on heroin, that he lived an upper class lifestyle and had rigorous standards. Instead of that being enough, this twit driver had to make up a bunch of stuff and turn it into him schooling the uppity too-stiff black man. I'm still not finding any reason to be thrilled with how they misportrayed Shirley.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 7:36pm
Green Book did Driving Miss Daisy a favor. Driving Miss Daisy now has competition for the title “Worst Best Picture”
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/how-driving-miss-daisy-became-one-of-the-most-105004366092.html
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 10:56pm
I hated Forrest Gump - it's Gomer Pyle on Hollywood steroids lacking any of Pyle's humor and gleeful cringeworthiness. An insult to the south, plus those "funny" scenes like a mother banging the doctor to get medical care for her idiot kid while the kid sits on the swing hearing the banging.
I remember Spike Lee's "She's Gotta Have It" at an art house when it came out, still rough but whacky, "Sex Lies and Videotape" ad you leaving yhe theater feeling you'd seen something new, the Richie Valens bio was a bit cheesy but a hat tip to the growing Hispanic influence, and in 89 Public Enemy was shifting the sexytime hiphop to grown up pissed off politics with "Fear of a Black Planet" and "It takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back". Having this cute snorefest in the middle wasnt thrilling, but I ignored Dances With Wolves and Avatar and most others as well.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 1:57am
This is shocking. A movie about some historical event that people are complaining about not being historically accurate. I'm trying to think, has that ever happened before or has it ever not happened?
by ocean-kat on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 4:10am
I am Spartacus.
by CVille Dem on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 9:06am
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 10:27am
People complain about movies being inaccurate all the time.
I'm echoing that this one's a disaster - they didn't try to consult with the family,
they made up "facts", they made the chauffeur into a type of "friend" that he apparently wasn't -
he was just another short-timer like many others.
This is a composer and musician who died just 6 years ago, not a well-buried WWII character. Possibly worse is that he's not well-known, so people won't realize all the crap diversions from reality.
Not so differently, many people were offended that Freddie Mercury's gayness was largely wiped from his bio
I posted this link before, but here it is again - a feel-good bio that purports to be the (near-as-Hollywood-gets) truth, but is far from that, a "friend" who was actually fired for not acting right as a chauffeur?
"As is typical of a Hollywood White Savior Film, Green Book places Dr. Shirley in several dangerous circumstances with racist white men so that Vallelonga can swoop in and save the day. In the process, Vallelonga teaches the world-renowned Black pianist about Black music and how to eat fried chicken."
https://shadowandact.com/the-real-donald-shirley-green-book-hollywood-sw...
I'm sure Erin Brockovich took liberties, as did Norma Rae, and the 3 black NASA mathematicians in Hidden Figures, but they came out looking good and AFAIK *reasonably* accurate - would it be acceptable to have a Martin Luther King bio show him getting tips from white neighbors on how to make a more forceful speech or how to eat ribs, just for "artistic license" sake? Maybe we could make up Neil Armstrong cheating on his flight tests to become an astronaut, maybe have Jackie O lick her fingers eating chicken and spitting in a spittoon in private to make her more "human", or Elvis having a stunt double to do his dance moves...
And then they pull the typical bullshit making Shirley cut off from his family - a particularly painful issue among blacks and completely opposite to the truth that Shirley kept strong connections with his family - which can be pretty tough for a busy touring musician, especially in that time.
It was a scandal when James Frey's A Million Little Pieces "biography" hawked by Oprah turned out to be false - why is a crap distorted bio of a famous recently-deceased black man above that, especially when they made no attempt to make sure it was accurate?
Yeah, I'm sure someone thought it a great idea to make a "Driving Mr. Daisy" sequel, but the original was based on a play, not a real person.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 1:36pm
There s a documentary telling the true story of the Green book that will air today. It is also available for streaming. Both can be obtained on The Smithsonian Channel.
https://www.theroot.com/the-green-book-guide-to-freedom-documentary-provides-a-1832866861
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 2:47pm
There's a review of the documentary @ The Atlantic by Hannah Giorgis and Vox.com published a summary of an interview with its filmaker, both published Sat. before the awards.
Edit to add: here's a review of same @ Forbes and @ Billboard and @CNN . The LATimes has just done a story about the sites that remain. Looks to me like the movie winning the Oscars has helped get publicity for the documentary.
Wikipedia, where I always go first when I want the true historical background of a story fictionalized in art, has a very lengthy and well-documented entry on The Negro Motorist Green Book
(I'm also fond of Wikipedia for checking up on a movie itself before I decide to watch it, including the plot--spoilers are definitely allowed there--as I am the type who would rather watch for other things than just plot.)
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 6:51pm
One big complaint was that the movie trivialized the Green Book, and underplayed the danger blacks felt driving the back roads around the south. That would be something to portray - especially *without* anything much happening Mississippi Burning style, but simply the dread that it could happen - kinda like a black Blair Witch Project.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 7:41pm
All movies that try to tell a story in two hours about anything that actually happened that took longer than two hours to happen are of necessity inaccurate.
Rather than complain, if I am inspired by the movie, to me the game has always been to the check out the artistry of the summarizing by going back to the real story. If the movie is good, if it touched me, I then have a greater desire to check out the real story and learn what actually happened. So that I can better understand how the team making the movie spun me, to admire or loathe or anything inbetween. It's about artistry of communication.
I haven't seen "The Green Book" but I have heard from a friend who saw it who happens to have very highly tuned tastes and also academic background in cultural history and he felt it very well done. Which surprised me, as many professional reviews were not that great. At the same time he thought "A Star is Born" to be unbearable dreck, so I know he is not a total sucker for emotional schmaltz.
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 5:37pm
If they'd played it without the "I was best buds w Don Shirley" angle, I'd be much more accepting of its fiction and actual movieness.
Though I'll note that when I travelled in India I was amazed by how neat and clean huts in remote villages could be, how clean the laundry was, how sanitary it could be. (while other places could be shocking). The idea that The Green Book didn't just show shacks and rundown motels, but catered to all levels (and much wider geography than the south) of black travellers seem pivotal.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 2:24am
Yes, now that I have had time to sleep on it, everything about it is so shocking. When has the Academy ever shown approval of a "feel good" flick before?
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 10:44am
Uh, like the last "Magic Negro" film (Four Feathers is a good example where the mysterious black man appears out of the desert to devote all his energy to sustaining the white hero), or when a brave white woman inspires and motivates a community of cowed and hopeless black women ("The Help", aka The Helpless). I'd imagine supporting roles to people who used to be your oppressor has lost a bit of its ironic feelgood thrill by now.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 3:41pm
They have never been an avant-garde organization but I suspect a majority likes to think of themselves as having the power to push mass pop culture Overton window a few degrees this way or that given that they have managed to somehow capture the attention of a gigantic global audience over the decades. Yes, they often vote for the sappy stuff for the big prizes and it's not meant to be ironic.
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 5:19pm
More shock and awe from the evening:
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 11:26am
Interesting to read what a reporter from The Hill saw when given the assignment of picking out the biggest political memes in the show: Six most memorable political Oscars moments
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 11:55am
This movie didn't win in the best documentary category. The vast majority of the best picture category movies for decades have been total fiction. One of the movies this year that many have suggested should have won, Black Panther, isn't just fiction it's totally impossible. It's not scientifically accurate. Historical accuracy isn't even a remote issue in most films. When there's some film about some historical event I just assume it's not historically accurate. I've seen this controversy often enough to know that movies are not accurate renditions of history. Since most movies have no questions at all about historical accuracy it can't be the most important criterion to use to judge a movie's quality. Surely there are much more important criterion regularly used to judge a film.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 10:04pm
"Gandhi" didn't win best documentary either, but people expected a reasonable adherence to the truth, as it's a biography. "Jackie" was a biography, though a shorter time span. "Hidden Figures" was a true story if 3 black female NASA mathematicians. "Vice" is the story of Cheney, "Dunkirk" is the story of Dunkirk. Any large deviation from the truth kills the reason from these films and betrays the audience, though we accept *some* artistic license. Some period pieces like "Cadillac Records" have "art" written all over them, so we suspend our disbelief more and enjoy the show.
But "Green Book" isnt't that, is it. They couldn't even be bothered to find existing family members. It's a literal whitewashing of a white man's encounter with a famous black man, making up stuff, distorting stuff, the white man come out looking fabulous and fucking up the black man's carefully tailored image and standards and ssuccess - which for white folk is fine cause they didn't know him, but for black folk it's like taking a scalpel to Willie Mays or Howlin Wolf, who instead of cultural icons become just silly extra for some wannabe white dude.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 1:35am
What is reasonable is subjective. Gandhi was the myth of the great man. Any reasonable adherence to the truth would have seriously damaged that myth. I think you know more history than I so I'm pretty sure you know that. But you think telling that myth was reasonably truthful. I thought it was fiction. But since I don't look to movies for historical accuracy that didn't bother me. I doubt that Vice is the story of Cheney but I haven't seen it yet. It's popularity leads me to believe it's the liberal version of the "truth." I know Mississippi Burning was bullshit, or should I say loosely based on the history. Good movie though. It won more awards than GB and was just as controversial for many of the same reasons. "Upon release, Mississippi Burning was embroiled in controversy; it was criticized by African-American activists involved in the civil rights movement and the families of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner for its fictionalization of history." Were you as upset about Mississippi Burning as you are about GB?
The more I know about a particular event or period in history the more I'm aware of how fictionalized a movie's version of history is. I don't know how you come to your conclusions as to what amount of fictionalization is reasonable. But since I don't expect historical accuracy in movies it's not an issue for me at all.
by ocean-kat on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 2:25am
Mississippi Burning was set around an event, and everyone knows there are too few facts known to make a bio. It's a historical fiction based around a real event. Yeah, Churchill and Cheney will draw critics and admirers, and there will be political spin.
But did they kill off Cheney's brother to have a better plot? make him a liberal converted by a conservative, or perhaps invent a liberal lover who jilted him to make him so irrascible?
In any case, they lose the musicianship and the eclectic real-life figure and turn him into Driving Mr Daisy, so what's the point - another Shawshank Redemption with a brief cultural premise. Whatever, have it.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 2:38am
What's the point, and why, seems to be the question to me. I don't know a lot about movies but I think about the things I'm exposed to. The more I know about things the more interesting they become for me. The more I can think about them.
Maybe I can find a way to express a bit of my thinking. I liked High Anxiety by Mel Brooks. But I missed a lot of it when I first saw it. As years went by I learned that it was a parody of Hitchcock films. I saw some of those Hitchcock films. I learned that one thing Hitchcock was the first to do was to put the camera in unusual places. Before him the camera was like a member of the audience looking at the stage. There's a scene in High Anxiety with the camera looking up at a couple through a glass table. As the couple are chatting and eating they kept blocking the camera. One of them would pick up a desert cup, take a bite, and put it back down in front of the camera. The camera would move a few inches to avoid the cup and refocus on the actors. Another would pick up a plate, eat a few bites, and put it back on the table blocking the camera. It repeated throughout the scene It was funny when I didn't know why he did it but it was funnier and more interesting when I got the joke in context. Sometimes I know why I like something sometimes I don't know enough to know why I like it. I haven't studied film like I've studied music.
I really like Serenity by Josh Whedon. It's just an action film but it's ten times better than many other action films, for example Black Panther. I've been thinking about why I like it. It's the dialog. The vocabulary used is larger than is normal for this type of film. Each character has a unique speech pattern using this more complex vocabulary. The dialog enhances the character development. It's well acted, I believe the actors are the character they are portraying. The plot, while simple, is interesting enough and aligns with my values.
If a movie is "historical" you want it to be historically accurate. Fine if you want that but it's all fiction to me. So I can't relate to your critique. If GB was fiction how would you judge it. Is the acting good? The dialog interesting? The story interesting? Is there anything unique about it? All I'm getting from you is it's bad because it's not historically accurate. What criterion do you use for the many films that are not historical and therefore accuracy isn't an issue? How does GB stand up when evaluated using that criterion?
by ocean-kat on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 5:56am
I'm all for creativity, tearing down sacred cows, et al. Yes, I have movies I didn't understand well the first time, or one I'm thinking of where the sexual violence really moved me to a different space, say broke childhood's naivete, shocked me. Or then there's Shakespeare in Love, which repurposed Shakesepeare's life in a fun way, or some of the later Mad Men-like modernization of another play with DiCaprio, or a nice version of Macbeth in a PA diner.
I have not seen GB, so cannot judge the acting and script, but imagine it would be a meh or meh+.
In any case, let's consider Birth Of A Nation - a breakthrough film for its time, but also cheering on the KKK. It's anathema now, whatever its artistic value. It's hard to separate GB from its cultural claims & meaning - it's premised on some white guy reaching across the racial divide - but the premise is based on lies, and the message of that "reaching across" is culturally insulting. Considering we're still stuck with our original sin, and race relations haven't really improved, judging from the need for BLM & Take A Knee and the tone of last election, that cultural deafness and insult is a deal breaker.*
I remember going to a Saturday matinee as a kid, and in the film an actress' top came down exposing her breasts. When my Mom picked me up, needless to say she was upset at that little plot development (I remember her slapping my brother for saying something, which was rather funny - he had that "but I wasnt the one who did it" look on his face). It didn't matter whether the movie was good or bad, artistic or not - in this case it was supposed to be safe Saturday fare for the Bugs Bunny set, and tits out was a deal breaker. I see GB in something of the same light - it's presumed to present a lens on a famous black composer and the means by which blacks in that age navigated & survive, yet the film distorts both. Beyond that, I fall back on the worst journalist question ever, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
I see Black Panther as raw meat for its audience. Crazy Rich Asians as raw meat or its audience. Woody Allen movies cater to a certain taste, and other people hate them. I don't watch adventure films much, the kind of slapstick rom-com flicks usually leave me cold though I have a few favorites. But you're probably right - Serenity is probably much better than Black Panther, which was made & marketed with heavy symbolic effect, much like Wonder Woman.
I'm a very tiny part of the global audience, and I'm not judging GB on whether I would like it - though made right, I'd be intrigued by both the Green's Book that I knew nothing about, as well as Shirley's music, which I haven't heard, and his position as kind of an iconoclast elite black intellectual, a historical role that's seldom seen in (white-majority) culture. Why they destroyed or watered down the connection to all of these goldmines, I've no idea.
The Color Purple was an amazing film, for the little I like Steven Spielberg. In terms of breakthroughs, it spoke to blacks, it spoke to lesbians, it took on domestic abuse, it took on the perilous demeaning place of blacks in a white world, it didn't come across preachy, and of course had a feel-good ending. But I presume if Spielberg had deviated too much from a well-crafted book, watered down symbolism or events, he would have lowered its power, and I'm sure there were or could have been risky moves in casting or plot lines that could have diminished or completely devalued the movie. But foremost, it seems to have been done with respect. Probably some people were horrified by the lesbian theme, others horrified by other issues, but can't please everyone. Still, you can try not to directly step on raw nerves.
*I should note that as AA noted a few weeks ago re: Northam, it's really up for the target audience/audience involved to decide, I'm far far away, so if blacks find GB good or convincing, that's their biz, maybe I'd step back since it really doesn't affect me, but from what I've read, I agree that its distortions are insulting.
Though thinking again, Don Shirley wasn't just a black man - he was a person, his life is not there just to pull this way & that just because he's dead, nor does he belong to the black community per se, other than he built his ties as he built them, which included that community, and when you start ripping out the important connections, it's like stripping a corpse.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 6:53am
Did not read this response closely when I answered - truth is, I didn't think MB was great, don't recall the complaints, but perhaps would have felt the same way as with GB if I'd read & thought about them. Or I might disagree. I'm not a purist on this. Go to any movie blog and you'll see tons of comments for and against movies, even ones we consider great or absolute trash (and I have some favorite trash picks that hurt so good...)
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/28/2019 - 5:41am
The NAACP Image Awards are at the end of March. It will be interesting to see how BlacKkKlansman fares against Black Panther.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/50th-naacp-image-awards-tickets-51175799193
400 years since arriving in Virginia
50 years of image awards
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 11:14pm
What standards do you use to evaluate a movie? I thought Black Panther sucked. It seems to me that it's only redeeming quality is it portrayed a black man as a hero and had mostly black people in most of the roles, if one considers that a redeeming quality. What else was there?
by ocean-kat on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 11:22pm
My standard is to applaud what I like. It is a superhero movie that focused on Afrofuturism, a breakthrough. I loved the costume design and production technique. I’m looking forward to seeing how the story continues in the nw Avengers movie and the next Black Panther movie. The movie captured the imaginations of many people, thus it’s popularity. The movie was inspirational. What else was needed?
A major reason for the enthusiasm about the film was the fact that there was a black hero and a thriving black community. Hollywood has a history of movies were the black guy dies saving the white person. The original “Night of the Living Dead” was a classic example.
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 8:43am
The Central Intelligence Agency was live-tweeting about “Black Panther” during the awards show, making sure that people knew that vibranium was fictional
https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2019/02/cia-black-panther-twitter/
https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2019/02/cia-black-panther-twitter/
Weird
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 9:55am
They're duplicating your links too - scary.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 11:34am
I don't find it weird at all, it looks like goofy P.R. to me. They want to sound like they are real people too, who also watch the Oscars, just a fun organization that maybe you young fans of Black Panther out there might want to join when you grow up. They are looking to diversify; they found that limiting humint to just the WASP tribe doesn't get them very far. Be all that you can be: there's other options besides the Marines, think about us, we're cool superheroes too.
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 12:24pm
I want to make it clear that I don't want to get into defending The Green Book as a movie because I haven't seen it.
I just strongly agreed with all of oceankat's initial comments along the lines of "doh!". Doh, history-based movies are not accurate, they include dramatic license for message purposes. Doh, the Academy Awards usually reflects mainstream pop culture and it is therefore often mediocrity which is rewarded.
With these points a given, it is exactly this kind of article that has grown tiresome to me: "what an outrage that such a piece of shit movie got best picture!" That is where I begin to react sarcastically! I've seen this "outraged at best picture award" article too many years now.
It is like a tiresome elite whine.
Rather, what I find really neat about the Oscars: it is highly affected by lowest common denominator current culture worldwide! But the electors also have some savvy, they are elites of a certain kind, elites that have to understand how to sell to lowest common denominator. Not the kind that whine about pop culture lowest common denominator, more the kind that pander to it.
The top awards always seem to pander more to lowest common denominator, to not try to be very radical. (I think I once read, not sure if it is true, that is partly a reflection of the whole body voting for those awards, where in the more specialized awards, only the people that work in those fields vote.) It is an interesting indicator of where pop culture is at the moment, where the boundaries are, where they can be pushed so that things are still exciting, but not too far to turn too many people off. All the more so because such a huge world audience watches and is affected.
I found the actual design of the awards show this year to be the most interesting thing about it. It was very reflective of a new "lowered attention span" culture from internet device use! Without a host guiding it, they were constant quick jumps from one meme to the next, packed full of memes, almost chaotic jumping. I found it hard to multitask which I usually do with something like this. Even the ads seemed to flow into the show, you couldn't tell where the show ended and the commercial started. It didn't seem like the tiresome same old same old droning on too long where the host could have been Bob Hope. Said to me: this is how pop culture has changed, truly, change is here: no more "long form."
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 12:53pm
P.S. Within this context, the question of whether John Lewis would be seen as an Uncle Tom for what he did was interesting to me. The contrast with Spike Lee's behavior made it even more interesting. So it was like a setup like this: hey world out there, who you gonna believe, John Lewis (old ways of seeing) or Spike Lee (new ways of seeing.)
And in the end, as far as best picture, what I see: lots of buzz for learning more about and understanging the Jim Crow period. Not to mention an emphasis on role playing and role reversal about class issues. Mho, the latter is probably what the majority of the academy voters probably saw as the merit: white guy plays the lower class, black guy plays the gay-ish elite, busting pop culture stereotypes without being too radical, making lowest common denominator think.
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 1:03pm
There are outlets to honor black films other than the Academy Awards. I haven’t seen any large pushback criticizing John Lewis’ appearance on the Oscars. There has been more commentary about a black male actor wearing a tuxedo gown to the event.
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 1:39pm
There has been more commentary about a black male actor wearing a tuxedo gown to the event.
That's my sense too. And it is the case in recent decades that attendees use the red carpet and global audience to push extreme boundaries. Because mere association with the kings and queens of modern entertainment world allows them to do it, they don't banish it, they are tolerant of quirks as long as you don't make them themselves push the meme.
The reaction to this one costume shows a boundary there on queerness/intersexuality, the mass culture is far away from being ready to accept and overall many different kinds of people felt free to ridicule him without shame.
Conservative people try hard to brand all of "Hollywood" with the extreme pushers on the red carpet etc. but I don't think the majority falls for that, they just see "Hollywood" as tolerant of wacko creativity all in good fun, not necessarily in full support. If they didn't give that off, they wouldn't have a mass audience.
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 2:29pm
With excerpt with my underlining following tweet
What Green Book’s Best-Picture Oscar Does (and Does Not) Mean by K. Austin Collins
Would like to throw in my own suspicion from the getgo: the majority would this year try even harder than usual to pick most "least alienating" because of the Trump troll effect on the country and the world. Basically looking for an "anti-outrage" message to sooth the savage breasts. Offering escapism during the Depression is how they grew into what they are today.
by artappraiser on Fri, 03/01/2019 - 12:26am
The only caveat is 30's Depression offered Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, etc - real flights of fancy. Prolly there was nothing that immersing this year, so a made-for-TV melodrama had to suffice
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 03/01/2019 - 1:32am