More Gnashing of Teeth and Wringing of Hands, Post-Oscar

I'm still sitting here gnawing on this thing. Wasteland's suspicion that there may have been a "WTF? It wasn't that good" sentiment playing into the results of the Oscars makes some sense. But it doesn't solve the problem for me entirely; maybe it would if Brokeback and Crash were the only two films in the category, but there were other, better pictures in the category than Crash. But did those suffer from the same affliction as Brokeback? I found this piece by Kenneth Turan at the LA Times illuminating. Turan writes:

I don't care how much trouble "Crash" had getting financing or getting people on board, the reality of this film, the reason it won the best picture Oscar, is that it is, at its core, a standard Hollywood movie, as manipulative and unrealistic as the day is long. And something more.

For "Crash's" biggest asset is its ability to give people a carload of those standard Hollywood satisfactions but make them think they are seeing something groundbreaking and daring. It is, in some ways, a feel-good film about racism, a film you could see and feel like a better person, a film that could make you believe that you had done your moral duty and examined your soul when in fact you were just getting your buttons pushed and your preconceptions reconfirmed.

So for people who were discomfited by "Brokeback Mountain" but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, "Crash" provided the perfect safe harbor. They could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what "Brokeback" had to offer. And that's exactly what they did.

Turan also points out that Brokeback was, in many ways, the easiest to digest of the remaining films in the category, all of which
were "discomforting" pictures. And none of them got jack. Go read the whole thing.