MightyLB said:
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I present as counterpoint Gone With the Wind. All films, even those set in a different time period, are still subject to the time in which they are made. Gone With the Wind and the book it was based on were both part of an early-20th-Century cultural perception of romanticizing the American Civil War - a collective view of the conflict as the South's noble-but-ill-fated fight to the end and a way for America to say, "Ah yes, it was sad and dramatic, but it's all in the past now, and it really wasn't that bad." The film does not try to say much about the causes and effects of the Civil War itself, but primarily views it more like a natural disaster, inescapable and with almost no warning, through the eyes of the protagonist Scarlett O'Hara. Scarlett's need to survive comes not from an internal strength, but from pure self-absorption. This would make for an intriguing character study worthy of analysis through the years, except that Scarlett goes through no character growth until the last ten minutes of the film, and by this point, it's a marvel anyone still cares about her well-being.
African-Americans in Gone With the Wind are happy, contented, mostly-invisible slaves before the War, and a dangerous, omnipresent, mostly-invisible menace after the War. Hattie McDaniel would win the Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role Oscar and be the first African-American woman to do so, but her role was "Mammy", a character who was given no other name in the film and who embodies much of the "Mammy" stereotype that the African-American community abhors for more than a few good reasons. [Hattie McDaniel, talented actress with long career, wins Best Supporting Actress for playing a maid. Viola Davis, talented actress with long career, nominated for Best Actress for playing a maid. There's a whole other post somebody can write on how little/much the Academy has changed.]
By the time Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War came along in the 90's, American culture was embracing the viewpoint of, "The Civil War wasn't that bad. It was worse." In another fifty or so years, a feature film or TV documentary about or set in the Civil War will reflect the future's view of the conflict. The Academy does not strive for artistic survivability, as it were, for this only possible in hindsight. If the Academy really did have the ability honor the films that would "stand the test of time", the 1939 Best Picture wouldn't have been Gone With the Wind. It would have been The Wizard Of Oz.
The differance is that "Gone With The Wind" is a period drama, and the civil war was at that time history, and known to be relevent. Compared to a movie entirely based on current trends that nobody knows are going to endure.
If anything the attitude espoused by "Gone With The Wind" on an unchangable series of events is MORE relevent due to how political trends have changed how people tend to view the same period in history. To be honest you could say that it also came a lot closer to the realities of the situation than current takes on the Civil War, both by being closer to the truth, and less tied up in post-civil liberties movement attempts to re-write history.
For example right now you see a tendency to try and present every southern plantation owner as a demon given flesh, and go on about the horrible conditions of black workers, the stereotype of which comes from taking the absolute worst isolated events from a period of decades (many of which got th slave owners in big trouble) and combining them all into a potrayal of what day to day life was like. "Gone With The Wind" gives a more accurate portrayal of what the average was like, with a self absorbed but not paticularly evil leadership, and a bunch of slaves that are fairly happy and well taken care of. More akin to the old "I wanted for nothing except for freedom" line (from Hemmingway I believe) than current civil liberties rhetoric.
That said, it could be said that the story of "Gone With The Wind" is more about the period, and the lifestyle, than it is about a love story or what happens with Scarlet even if those ARE aspects of the entire thing. Indeed it could be said that the time that movie was made was the only time such an honest and accurate portrayal of the subject matter could have been created.
When you look at how "Gone With The Wind" is constructed, it's top notch, with elaborate sets, good acting, beautiful cinematography for the time, and a great directing job. It's by no means my favorite movie, or even one I find paticularly entertaining but I can see why it's considered to be almost in a league of it's own.
Your counter-presentation of "The Wizard Of Oz" kind of fails because why that movie is more entertaining, from the perspective of the movie-makers craft it's NOT as good. This doesn't mean it's not excellent, but it's not in the catagory of "Gone With The Wind" on the levels that are supposed to matter. For one it's based on a well known children's book so probably wasn't given that much credit for writing because of the source material. Then you have to consider it's a musical which relied on portions of the movie relying less on being a movie than a dance stage, and also relied on cute factor and "awww, look at all the midgets together like that" to sell it. It's quite the production, but from the Academy's
perspective hey probably figured that all the gimmicks carried it as much as skill at movie making or any paticular performance. Did people love the movie because it was such a great movie, or because of all the gimmicks? To an audience that distinction might not exist, they only care "was I entertained" but the point of the Academy is supposed to be to view it a higher level than just that.... which is why so many boring, but well constructed, movies win. It's not so much a matter of the Oscars being exclusively the tastes of old white men (as Bob puts it, but he blames white guys for just about everything it seems), as about movies on a level that doesn't ever occur to the typical movie goer. Truthfully I think even "buffs" like Bob who know more about movies on a technical level than the average person really "get it" on the academy level... so few people do, which is why it's so exclusive. Filling the academy with a bunch of pop culture aspects, and minorities representitive of
the moment, would ruin the fairly narrow focus it's supposed to have.
Personally I like to occasionally think that the guys at the Academy are entertained by the same stuff most of us are. Probably some of them are at their video-viewing happy place watching porno with a beer in one hand like the lowest, and most common demographic imaginable... and that all of them appreciate the FX ridden blockbusters and entertainment spectacles that we do on some base level. The thing is that when they are sitting there for the awards they are "at work" and trying to apply very specific sets of criteria, some of which are doubtlessly exploited by film-makers while hunting for Oscar (though the way it's done is a bit differant than how Bob angrily described it). "Was it entertaining" is probably pretty low on the list of standards, and "Does it appeal to the mainstream" probably doesn't even register. Chances are if they really gave awards without those standards, we'd have the same group of old leches at least nominating Jenna Jameson (or the reigning porn queen of the moment) for best actress, and the best boob job on film for best special effect, every year.
