3.27.00
Oscar Wrap

3.24.00
How Many Bathrooms Have You?

3.23.00
The Law: Nuissance Suit

3.22.00
ED: Don't Do It

3.22.00
Gun Rites

ast year, when the brilliant director cum anti-Communist informant, Elia Kazan, won the lifetime-achievement award, one could be tempted to say that Hollywood was growing up. Numerous dyed-in-the-wool limousine liberals, hot-tub socialists, and Ferrari-driving Fabians actually managed to applaud the acclaimed director of On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd. Of course, quite a few fools and know-nothings sat on their hands in solidarity to a cause they neither understand nor care much about. But even their silent protest evidenced a sign of maturity. There were no boos, just a lot of grumpy faces — no more theatrical, to be sure, than the foot-stomping panic you might see when Alec Baldwin discovers there will be subtitles at a brainy movie.

Last night’s Oscars displayed none of the drama and passion of last year. This time around it was a conventional contest among Hollywood’s "best" movies. But, in many ways, this year’s Oscars provide a much clearer picture than last year’s ceremony of the real politics of Hollywood.

Look at the winners. Best picture, actor, screenplay, and director went to American Beauty. Best actress went to Hilary Swank for her portrayal of a girl wanting to be a boy in Boys Don’t Cry. Best supporting actress went to Angelina Jolie for Girl, Interrupted. Best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor (Michael Caine) for The Cider House Rules.

What do all of these films (with some mitigating circumstances for Cider House) have in common? They all reveal Hollywood’s reigning world view that society is stifling, conventions are arbitrary, and individual expression to the point where it is indistinguishable from exhibitionism are the highest values. American Beauty is about a married man — a whole family in fact — trapped by the buttoned-down norms of suburban life (for more about this see this week’s excellent "Lexington" column in The Economist). Girl, Interrupted is about a young girl so trapped by her parents’ nd society’s expectations that she is deemed mentally disturbed. Cider House Rules is a more nuanced film, but its author believes it is a tribute to reproductive freedom, which frees women from being trapped with a family they do not want. Boys Don’t Cry is, literally, about a young man trapped in a girl’s body.

Trapped, trapped, trapped.

This is not to say these were all unoriginal or unimaginative movies — though the formula of American Beauty was far from original — but isn’t it interesting that virtually every single supposedly "maverick" or "unique" film operates under the same assumptions?

Indeed, even The Matrix, which swept the technical Oscars — for editing, sound effects, etc. — is about how every human being is literally trapped by a technological master race. The symbolism of the film has generated a huge cult following among technophobes and technophiles who fret about the conforming, soul-killing world of commerce. You could call them the boys in the gray flannel nose rings.

While American Beauty has the highest intellectual buzz, largely because it was beautifully filmed with fine performances, it is Boys Don’t Cry which makes the most interesting statement about Hollywood’s biases. In the film, Brandon Teena is really Teena Brandon, a young girl from Lincoln, Nebraska, who is suffering from a sexual identity crisis. She desperately wants to be a boy — not a lesbian. In the film, young Brandon goes to great lengths to conceal his sex (as opposed to her gender — don’t get me started) and woo young ladies as if he were a boy. Invariably this leads to problems, as Brandon is not in fact a boy. Only Brandon considers this to be a minor quibble.

Eventually, he is found out once again, viciously raped and subsequently murdered. Not a single character in the film — except for one benevolent gay man — has an IQ higher than the average temperature in late autumn.

In Boys Don’t Cry, Lincoln, Nebraska, and its environs are simply a microcosm for the United States generally. It seems we are to believe that the poor-white-trash crooks, alcoholics and morons that make up the cast of this film are typical. This is the real America — or at least its authentic and bigoted heart.

The lesson, according to Hillary Swank and the film’s many critical fans, is exactly what you might guess. Sexual freedom is still hard to come by in these United States. Society cruelly clings to such outdated categories as "male" and "female." Imposing this conformity on people who have transcended this antiquated view cruelly crushes the wings of many a young butterfly like Brandon.

Upon accepting the award, Swank called for a society where "we not only accept our differences, but celebrate them." This, in a nutshell, is the distilled political wisdom of Hollywood today. A large number of extremely wealthy people who are lavished with the sort of praise normally reserved for potentates and pashas and who believe that even the tiniest inconvenience, say, no Pelligrino in their trailer, is a hate crime, want everyone to see the world their way. Hollywood reverence for sexual license is such that during the impeachment hearings they often spoke of the President as a martyr to human liberty.

The problem, of course, is that not everyone can live like a movie star. Consider, for example, an item in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly. The magazine reports that a growing number of high-priced movie stars — Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone, Barbra Streisand — have taken to instructing their staffs not to ever look them in the eye, as this makes the stars uncomfortable. This is the world artists crave — where the most fragile of egos is protected from even an unwanted but still adoring glance.

For people without personal assistants, Hollywood’s message of personal liberation is very dangerous, and in that sense profoundly selfish. In American Beauty, Kevin Spacey pursues sexual and physical liberation — mostly by smoking pot and trying to bed a high school girl. He quits his job and gives up laying down any rules for his family. He’s fortunate to have some money to coast on, but he still throws his family into complete turmoil and eventually dies for his trouble. Should every father follow Spacey’s example? Should he indulge his mid-life crises to the point of abandoning home and work in pursuit of whatever floats his boat? You can do this if you are a pampered and indulged Hollywood artiste (and they do) — but can you do it if you’re a $35,000-a-year accountant with two kids and a mortgage?

The message of Boys Don’t Cry is equally troubling. Brandon is a very dim young woman, or man, or whatever. She regularly steals cars and misses court dates. She is attracted like a moth to a flame to extremely dangerous situations, among them seducing young women without telling them about her plumbing. The makers of the film suggest no blame should accrue to Brandon. She wasn’t looking for trouble, she was looking for love. She could not afford a sex-change operation and therefore she was not merely trapped in her body, she was also trapped in Nebraska.

But why? She could have moved. There are places in America where people like Brandon can have a life. It may seem unfair to someone like Brandon who wants to flit about town with a sexual prosthetic in her pocket surprising young girls. But life is unfair. Must Lincoln go the way of San Francisco, New York, and Hollywood. Is that fair to the tens of thousands of people who are quite comfortable with old-fashioned notions of male and female? I love politics, so I moved to Washington. Some people love art, so they move to New York. Some love to pretend they are members of the opposite sex, and there are places they can move to — alas, one of them is not Lincoln, Nebraska.

How much social reorganization must Americans go through in order to make a tiny fraction of a fraction of people content? If the film did not involve rape and murder by some horrible people, what would have been so bad if young Teena were simply and politely, not welcome? Hollywood would probably still call it fascist, but they don’t have the guts to make a movie that says so.

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