The problem with secret societies…
“Diversity is America’s super power.”—Will Smith
As a boy, my friends and I had a “secret club” where we could be boys (grossing each other out with bugs and snails, practicing fart noises or having burp contests, and talking about those strange creatures called girls). Sometimes that childhood club only has one member, but that one kid can let his imagination roll. (I’m being sexist, but I never observed this among girls until junior high when they created their cliques.) These secret societies are relatively harmless (except when the school ones turn to bullying).
Grown-ups participate in them too. There are the really obnoxious ones—fascist militias, the Ku Klux Klan, East LA gangs (street gangs anywhere, for that matter), the Mafia, and so forth. There seem to be good ones—the Shriners, Masons, Key Club, and so forth. There are also the ambivalent—Scientologists, Better Business Bureau, fraternities and sororities, and so forth. Most of these represent people coming together to form some kind of tribe, people with a “me-against-them” attitude and agenda, and that’s where problems arise. People amongst like-minded people feed off both positive and negative emotions and ideas, some recognized, others unconscious.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a secret society, a super-exclusive one. According to the LA Times, its members are 94% white and 77% male. They’re also old, most above sixty. The first percentage compares to the Ku Klux Klan; the last one to the Klan and most men’s lodges, even if they have a lady’s auxiliary. Moreover, no one knows who they are! They are supposedly so-called “experts” and impartial judges who determine who in the industry deserves to be recognized for cinematic achievement. The impartiality is questionable. In most cases, the Academy’s nominating process is like asking members of ISIS to determine which evangelical in America is the best Christian. Hollywood is dominated by old white men; they own the studios, they set the priorities, and they have zero qualifications for determining cinematic achievement precisely because they’re old members of the status quo. As Spike Lee says, Hollywood is rotten from top to bottom (in Mr. Lee’s defense, that’s my paraphrase—I have no desire to be politically correct here by coddling the members of this institution).
Let’s start with the name. I’ll agree that moviemaking can be an art form, although it often isn’t—it’s all about money. We give it a lot of fanfare, but how many times do you say, “I preferred the book.” That’s assuming the movie is based on a book, of course. Screenwriters think they know how to tell stories—sociopathic narcissism isn’t monopolized by Facebook users, you know—but so many movies eschew good storytelling by experts and use some jerk’s piss-poor story. Most of the time that leads to a box-office flop. It’s egregious when it doesn’t (Star Wars VII is a recent example—no new story there, and Episode IV was already bad; the Academy’s recognition proves they know nothing about quality). But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume moviemaking is an art, even if it’s pop-art.
Sciences? That’s pure, stinky stuff straight from a porta-john at an August rock concert. The word “Sciences” should be changed to “Technology.” That’s the mot juste. There’s no new science in moviemaking; it’s all known science applied to entertainment, and that’s called technology. Most moviemaking is done by teams of people working their butts off applying technology seamlessly so that passive spectators can get their passive and mental masturbations eating up Hollywood’s Cream of Wheat. The true worker-bees get a wee bit of recognition in the credits, but that’s as far as it goes. Every movie is like an evil corporation from a bad dystopian novel, with the director as CEO, the producer as HR head, and actors as salespeople. Rich people invest in the corporation and expect a huge return on their investment. They and the actors make millions; the little guys doing all the work receive a pittance in comparison. Think a MLB player enjoys obscene paydays? Check out the ones at the top in Hollywood!
I’ve been leading up to the idea that Oscar nominations represent an obnoxious and abusive farce perpetrated on not just good actors but that whole top-to-bottom rotten structure by a secret society of old white men, not to mention being an atrocious insult to the American public of moviegoers. It’s not surprising that most don’t vote to recognize minority contributions to the industry. Blacks are snubbed, but don’t forget the director of The Revenant was the only Hispanic. Any minority has to be ten times better than a white gal or girl to receive recognition.
The nominations are depressing and insulting, not only to the workers who create your entertainment, but to you, because you know quality when you see it too, probably better than those old white men. If you saw Will Smith in Concussion, you know that performance deserved a nod. I’m told that Michael B. Jordan in Creed deserved a nod too. Who did they nominate? An old white man, Sylvester Stallone! Idris Elba sounds like a Shakespearean James Earl Jones—love that voice!—but he received no nod for Beasts of No Nation. And none of this counts the non-acting awards the Academy hands out, which always reward team leaders and not the worker-bees.
The only way to avoid most of these atrocities is to do away with this secret society. First step, the list of voters in the Academy should be published. Second step, major efforts should be made to ensure diversity—the Academy’s voters should represent a cross-section of the American public, not a bunch of old white men, and they shouldn’t follow the SCOTUS but serve fixed terms, say five years. Third step, as found now as a feature with many reality contests, there should be a popular component to the voting. The Academy’s members can still pretend to act as sage judges, but the movie-viewing population should have a voice in order to mitigate their biases. Fourth step, if there are any old white men who are also movie reviewers in that secret society (I’m sure there are), their votes should weigh less (or not count at all) because they usually don’t know a good movie when they see it. Fifth step, the higher mucky-mucks in Hollywood shouldn’t have any vote at all, because they’re biased, and everyone knows they vote for their own films.
Note: after the above was written, the Academy announced some “major changes” will be implemented by 2020. Huh? That’s three more years of Oscars with no diversity! I saw nothing major in the proposals either. Besides, it’s too little too late, and not enough to reform the rotten system. For example, instead of term limits, the proposal states that lifetime membership is no longer guaranteed—the member has to remain in good standing by being involved in the industry. That’s a major copout. Instead of getting rid of the deadwood, they’re just adding more members—the deadwood will still bias the results! And the Academy will still remain a secret society.
That “being involved in the industry” says it all. The worst problem with this secret society is that it’s incestuous. Just like the pumas in the Hollywood hills, Hollywood is an antique train heading for a train wreck because of its inbreeding and kiss-my-ass-and-I’ll-kiss-yours attitudes. This incest weakens the film industry. Whole species disappear in an ecological niche when the gene pool is reduced; Hollywood fat cats run the same risk. As in the book industry (I’m all too painfully aware of this problem), the good old boys are trying to control public entertainment and bias it so that new voices can’t be heard or seen. For the book industry, readers suffer; for the film industry, moviegoers suffer. The Academy is like Dracula sucking the blood from creativity and diversity: it thinks it can and wants to live forever in its Hollywood coffin, but it’s time to put a stake in its heart and kill it for good. A completely new paradigm is required.
And so it goes….
