Crash winning Best Picture Sunday at the 78th Academy Awards wasn't exactly a surprise, but I was still shocked.
People who follow these things - yes, I admit I'm one of them - probably noticed during the weeks leading up to Sunday that a lot of talk was circulating around the Academy voters getting cold feet about awarding Best Picture to a gay love story and that they would compensate by giving the Oscar to Crash.
In doing so, the theory went (and now goes), the Academy wouldn't have to feel so bad about slighting the gay community since they awarded a film that deals with (well, claims to deal with) racial and ethnic differences.
I went into the awards knowing this, but when Jack Nicholson read off the winner, I still felt as if Paul Haggis had jumped through the TV and smacked me in the face.
It would be easy to say, Who cares? The Oscars never recognize anything really good anyway. Which is true, most of the time. Consider the Best Picture winners from 2000 on: Gladiator (Russell Crowe kills half of Rome while Joaquin Phoenix tries to make it with his own sister), A Beautiful Mind (Russell Crowe hangs out with imaginary friends in a Hallmark Entertainment take on schizophrenia), Chicago (Mrs. Michael Douglas hoofs, hollers and hams her way to an Oscar as Ren+
Good Night and Good Luck. and Munich all came away with nothing.
A large part of my disappointment stems from the lack of respect for Munich. Here's a film that actually has a legitimate take on ethnic relations, that truly explores the subject in a literate, respectful way without resorting to clich+ Steve
better luck next time.
Crash won just two other awards besides Best Picture: Editing and Original Screenplay. And really, the screenplay award is even more rankling when you realize that every other competing script is superior to Haggis and Robert Moresco's contrived work: Syriana
Good Night
and Good Luck
The Squid and the Whale and Match Point.
All of these are thoughtful, dense, complex scripts that tell a story and have a compelling message. All Haggis and Moresco's script tells us is that everyone in L.A. is a racist. I guess I missed the part where that is a powerful, insightful statement.
So what was I shocked about then? That the Academy would give blatantly undeserving films the Best Picture Oscar for six years running? (It goes back farther than that - look at the '90s.) That I was actually disappointed about Brokeback Mountain not winning? (As much I as I dislike this film, I'd vote for it over Crash any day.) That Jack Nicholson pronounced Capote like it was a Spanish film?
No, it's none of those. It's the meaning of the award, the impact. A friend wrote on my Facebook wall that he doesn't want to live in a world where Crash is a Best Picture winner. Neither do I.
The shock is that now I have to.
- Ben Saylor is a senior magazine journalism major. Send him an e-mail at bs100802@ohiou.edu.
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