The Oscars blowback

First off, it is pretty impressive how we didn’t even watch the Oscars ceremony yet still managed to pick up from various news outlets a pretty decent wealth of information to work off. The PR machine is obviously earning its dough.

Anyways, moving on… We may as well state that man, there were some serious omissions. We’re punning of course about the Coen’s note-perfect reworking of the tale of Job: A Serious Man [insert laughter here]. But then again the Oscars isn’t about rewarding the best films is it?

Which is why on reflection it was a fucking godsend that Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon didn’t get any awards. A lot has been made about the director’s ‘evolution’ from the ‘less refined’ Benny’s Video and Funny Games (1997) to the ‘more nuanced’ Hidden and now, The White Ribbon. And there is weight to the argument that Haneke has noticeably altered his more avowed antagonism to his audience, and that this has made them — for neither better nor worse necessarily — more palatable and suitable to award ceremonies such as these. (Which is a strange comment to make considering what a brutal experience it is to watch Hidden and The White Ribbon.) But the minute something like the Oscars decides that Haneke is award-worthy then something terrible has happened and that his ‘evolution’ is not for the better. But they haven’t and it isn’t. So… great.

But mainly the issue we have is with the success of The Hurt Locker. Why the hell did it win so many big gongs? [herr herr herr] Well, let’s look at the possibilities:

Bigelow is like, a woman and shit… Whether you want to believe that the Oscar panel decided to give a woman the Best Film and Best Director awards simply because it hadn’t (ridiculously) happened before or whether you do not, we’ll leave at that.

OK, the symbolic impact of this landmark could have some positive outcomes. However, the fact that The Hurt Locker is one of the most masculinist films we’ve seen in recent years means it seems pretty unlikely.

Also, that everyone in reaction to Bigelow’s success constantly referred to her previous relationship with James Cameron shows that simply giving out awards to female directors will end sexism as much as Obama getting into the White House will end racism (but maybe (definitely) we’re giving the Oscars way, way too much power here). Obviously if Cameron had won then no one would have even mentioned Bigelow.

It’s all like anti-war and stuff… Bullsheeeet. The Hurt Locker is not anti-war. It offers the American public (and British public for that matter) a convenient narrative that obscures the hellishly destructive role of the invasion and occupation of Iraq with a benevolent neo-colonialist apologia. That it chooses the narrative of a surgeon-like defence of the Iraqi population and infrastructure in the face of a brutal and outright evil insurgency is telling.

The Hurt Locker implicitly supports the idea of a smart war that can be waged by entering a foreign nation, hitting the offending targets with minimal damage and come out without impacting the native society. The film avoids the more problematic parts played by the allied forces in the conflict. Not least in that its protagonist is a bomb disposal expert that doesn’t come across unexploded US bombs every single day. The allied bombing campaign is completely obscured from the narrative. Instead you simply see in the film an inverse impression of the smart war ideal upon a post-war insurgency.

Mark Simpson makes the argument, in a different context, that apparently anti-war films often become extensions of the ideology that argued for the war in the first place.

‘The somatic interface of the military-industrial complex manages to colonize—or, indeed, to weaponize—even the most stringent critique. [This] undermines the very concept of the anti-war film, jeopardising the presupposition that some films can critique the wars they recount…’

And this applies directly to The Hurt Locker. This bomb disposal narrative justify a part of the war machine that while appearing to clean up the mess of war, in fact serves to apologise for the destruction.

But for all the above it is a decent action movie. And we actually enjoyed watching it at the time. Yeah, there are some clichés chucked in, but mostly it manages to avoid the more obvious pit falls in that respect. Plus, Bigelow gets some kudos when she steals some music from There Will Be Blood, which reminds us just what a good job Paul Thomas Anderson did (and what a more powerful anti-Iraq film TWBB is compared to The Hurt Locker).

Looking back on it now this didn’t really grapple with why THL won so many big gongs [pa-ha, it’s still funny]. Maybe it was an insidious award campaign. Maybe it is a good film after all and we should watch it again. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Maybe you’re right and maybe you’re wrong. But I ain’t gonna argue with you no more, I’ve done it far too long.

What do y'all think?