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And
the Award Goes to
According
to online reporter/gossip Matt Drudge, there was a minor flap
when Chris Rock was announced as host for the upcoming Academy
Awards. Some Academy members—who spoke up anonymously, of
course, because you never know when Rock might be in a position
to do some hiring—were concerned that the comic’s irreverence
might extend a bit too far. It’s all well and good to make
fun of, say, crack users or the President of the United States;
but the annual award of a gold statuette to important citizens
such as Cher (Moonstruck, ’88) or Red Buttons (Sayonara,
’57), well, that’s disrespectful to the point of blasphemy.
Reportedly, some of the voting members of the Academy found
Rock’s alleged comment, “Awards for art are fucking idiotic,”
to express insufficient regard for the solemnity of the event.
Rock isn’t the first to dis the ceremony, however. In the
past, even anointed actors took their shots. When previous
winner Marlon Brando won a second award for his work in The
Godfather he sent a representative in his place, a Native
American woman who made a brief speech about . . . something
. . . then refused the Oscar on Brando’s behalf. Of course,
Brando’s refusal was meant as a political message—however
vague—and didn’t seem to comment on the appropriateness of
the award, per se. George C. Scott, on the other hand, expressed
sentiments more in keeping with Rock’s; if they were less
vulgar, they were no less condemnatory: When Scott turned
down his award for Patton, he ridiculed the entire
event as “demeaning,” labeling it a “two-hour meat parade.”
This aversion to awards as markers of accomplishment in the
arts isn’t limited to the film industry. There are a handful
of high-profile instances of big names refusing their earned
glories. The writer Sinclair Lewis, for example, turned down
his Pulitzer for Arrowsmith, claiming that such prizes
appointed by committee could have the unintended but wholly
pernicious effect of training authors to write for
the committees; he further objected to the Pulitzer guidelines
that works represent and testify to the “wholesome aspects”
of American life—it’s an understatement to say that wholesome
wasn’t really Lewis’ bag. (Cynics, though, have pointed out
that the publicity that Lewis’ refusal gained him probably
benefited him far more than the $1,000 prize then awarded,
and that the writer showed no such scruples when picking up
a later Nobel.)
Even musicians have occasionally walked away from the podium—and
this is a group so needy of affirmation that there exist something
like 15 gazillion separate awards shows, from the Grammys
to the Bammys to the Nammys; from the Tejano Music Awards
to the Detroit Music Awards to the Canadian Aboriginal Music
Awards. The most notorious example and, frankly, the coolest,
is Nick Cave’s rejection of the Best Male Artist nomination
offered him by MTV:
“My
muse is not a horse and I am in no horse race and if indeed
she was, still I would not harness her to this tumbrel—this
bloody cart of severed heads and glittering prizes. My muse
may spook! May bolt! May abandon me completely!”
Here we have a cult artist who likely would have benefited
professionally from inclusion in the televised ceremony, whether
or not his dark and skittish horse came in; and, unlike Lewis,
it’s doubtful that Cave’s unwillingness to compete gained
him in any commercially measurable manner. His letter, which
you can find in full online, doubtless reinforced his iconoclast-with-integrity
image to his fans—and probably ended up on a bulletin board
here and there (not that I’d know first-hand or anything)—but
it’d be tough to frame this as a canny move to cash in. A
little histrionic? Well, perhaps, but hardly crass. Honestly,
the guy deserves an award for the refusal alone—if for no
other reason than that he got “tumbrel” in there.
In fact, that might be a way to go: Add to each of these red-carpet
group hugs one category along the lines of Best Artist Who
Will Have Nothing To Do With Us, And May Well Kill Us All,
which specifically addresses those artists either outside
or actively antagonistic to the mainstream, working with specifically
counterculture agendas (even if the “culture” in question
is just that of the specific industry).
An Oscar, then, for Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter
Story, which uses Barbie dolls to recount the singer’s
battle with anorexia and which sent A&M Records and Richard
Carpenter into litigious conniptions; or, better yet, one
for John Waters’ theatrically unreleased movie The Diane
Linkletter Story, in which Divine reenacts the suicide
of TV personality Art Linkletter’s LSD consuming daughter;
and a Grammy for DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album,
a mash-up of Jay-Z’s The Black Album with the Beatles’
The White Album, which incurred the wrath of Sony,
copyright holders of the Beatles songs therein mashed; and
Pulitzers all-around for Louis-Ferdinand Céline, George Bataille,
J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Samuel Delany,
Shelley Jackson and Michael Joyce—just for starters.
Or if that rankles, smacks too much of cooptation or suggests
the creation of yet another stultifying star-system, then
implement a plan whereby the award of an Oscar or Grammy,
or whatever, includes a community-service component demanding
that the recipient spend some portion of the upcoming year
advancing the cause of lesser known artists or surrender their
award to a runner-up—kind of like beauty pageant winners.
Or if that’s just hopelessly starry-eyed and naïve, keep the
current award structure, just set up the ceremonies so the
winners have to cross a general-admission mosh pit of fringe
artists. The interaction would, no doubt, do everyone some
good—and so long as they don’t let Billy Crystal host, it’ll
make for truly great TV.
—John
Rodat
jrodat@metroland.net
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