The more time I spend paying attention to the Oscars, the more disenchanting they seem to become. What was once sold as a genuine celebration of the best film has to offer can often feel like an elaborate, expensive marketing campaign for a handful of industry favorites. But in between its glitz and glamour, Hollywood helped me find love again. In its quest to literally rewrite history, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s latest series reminded me why the Academy Awards are worthwhile.
Every aspect of Hollywood tells an underdog story. A no-name screenwriter’s script is randomly picked from a pile by a director looking for his first movie. Meg, that resulting movie, is then filled with a group of new, never-before-seen talent. In fact the only name who would have been recognizable to audiences, Anna May Wong (played by Michelle Krusiec), is an out-of-work star known for being difficult. Getting a movie like this made in the 1940s, a time where star names carried actual ticket-buying power, would have been a truly mad gamble. That’s without even considering that during this racist, sexist, and homophobic period of history Meg‘s screenwriter is black, its director is half-Filipino, its leading lady is a black woman in an interracial relationship both on screen and in real life, and its screenwriter as well as one of its stars are openly gay.
In the old Hollywood Kenneth Angler wrote about, any one of these details — a film devoid of big names, a black romantic lead, a non-white and non-straight creative team — would have been more than enough to sink this project. That’s where the fantasy of Hollywood comes into play. Archie (Jeremy Pope), Raymond (Darren Criss), Camille (Laura Harrier), and the temporary and ground-breaking female studio head Avis Amberg (Patti LuPone) fight tooth and nail to get Meg made. Yet Meg only transforms from being miraculous to magical during the 20th Academy Awards.
In this retelling of history, this progressive, sad love story is nominated for some of the biggest Academy Awards of 1948. But under Murphy and Brennan’s script and Jessica Yu’s direction, Hollywood deliberately doesn’t just celebrate Meg‘s success as the triumph of a few underdogs. “A Hollywood Ending” transforms Meg’s many wins into the victory of underdogs and outsiders everywhere.
It starts early with Wong’s nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Despite her long career and esteemed roles, Wong is still known in Hollywood history for the one role she didn’t get, that of O-Lan in the film adaptation of The Good Earth. Instead of going to the Chinese-American Wong the part went to the white Luise Rainer, presumably because studio executives didn’t think audiences would pay to see a movie with a non-white lead. Rainer ended up winning Best Actress for the role, an award many have long thought Wong was robbed of due to racism.
But in Hollywood Wong finally gets her overdue Oscar. While she’s giving her speech, telling the world how little girls who look like her will now have at least one award-winning role model, the episode cuts to an Asian family excitedly watching. As Wong gives her pointed speech you feel the waves of blissful victory not from her but from this nameless family, hugging and gasping with joy.
This back and forth is repeated, again and again. When Archie wins the award for Best Screenplay, a young black man who has been anxiously listening alone in his room completely loses his composure. He jumps around and falls to the floor sobbing. This young man isn’t performing his joy for anyone. Every pound of his fist and tear-filled gasp is an expression of his pure happiness over the fact that someone like him, a black possibly non-heterosexual man, hasn’t just been allowed to tell his story. He’s been honored for it.
But no victory is as blissful or contagious as Camille Washington’s win for Best Actress. Well before the Oscars were ever an option, Camille’s story has revolved around them. Right after her name was printed in the trades as the first woman of color to be cast in a lead romantic role in a major studio film, this fictional legend was contacted by a real one: Hattie McDaniel (Queen Latifah). Throughout every one of Camille’s steps to fame, McDaniel was there coaching and encouraging her. But she did so not just out of the kindness of her heart but to remedy her own devastating slight.
The real McDaniel became the first woman of color to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. But despite making history, she wasn’t allowed in the room where it happened. Just as in Hollywood, McDaniel wasn’t allowed in the Academy Awards’ main ballroom because of the color of her skin.
That’s what Camille’s nomination means to the fictional McDaniel, a chance for her and all people of color to finally be present in the room. So when Camille goes further than McDaniel has ever gone, not only sitting in the front row of the Oscars but winning one herself for a starring role, it’s not just Camille’s victory. It’s not even Meg‘s victory. As the camera cuts between a grinning McDaniel, the young man who celebrated Archie, and the family cheering over Wong, it becomes clear that this victory belongs to millions. It’s a calling card to everyone who doesn’t fit into Hollywood’s white, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian, and predominately male mold, telling them all that their stories matter. It may just be an award but it says they matter.
During the comparatively few years I’ve actively watched the Oscars there have been glimmers of these empowering victories. Guillermo del Toro’s win for The Shape of Water, a truly bizarre, innovative, and romantic movie about a fish person and his lover certainly fell into that category. It was unmistakably a del Toro movie, an exercise in fantasy that was completely removed from other creators who have been pigeonholed or ignored due to their race. Likewise, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight winning over assumed winner La La Land for a story that was unapologetically black and queer was an incredible moment. The same could be said for Bong Joon-ho’s groundbreaking victories for Parasite, making it the first non-English language film to ever win many major awards. Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird — all were the greatest films of their time and all were acknowledged for it regardless of the fact they broke from Hollywood’s white, male, American, heterosexual mold.Seeing these victories and nominations has been incredible. Any time someone who is truly the best in their field is acknowledged as such it’s a warm moment. But seeing what these justified honors meant to the world at large through glowing articles, celebratory tweets, and tear-filled reaction shots in the audience, that was something more. Whenever someone Hollywood considers an outsider makes it, it sends a signal. If they can do it, I can too, no matter what I’m trying to accomplish or what limits society has imposed.
Hollywood‘s Oscars sweep, fictional as it may be, reminded me of those great Oscars moments, and the possibility of more. Life is already difficult and hurtful enough. But that a too-long awards show has the potential to praise human greatness? That it’s able to validate the best in storytelling regardless of race, gender, and sexuality and make someone who identifies as an outsider feel not only accepted but valued? That makes all the over hyping worth it.
"Hollywood" - Google News
May 06, 2020 at 01:03AM
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'Hollywood's Final Moments Make the Oscars Magical Again - Decider
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