Another night at the Oscars has come and gone, this time without possible criminal liability. Or memorable moments. Or even good movies. In fact, the decision to replace the red carpet with a beige one is an apt metaphor for the whole ho-hum event. As The Cut noted:

Meanwhile, many of the actual people on the carpet were rendered nearly invisible by its shade. The night’s guests, who didn’t find out about the color change until the carpet was unfurled last week, showed up in outfits that matched the floor, turning the carpet into a big, bizarre sea of camouflage.

Camouflage may have been the point this year. Academy bigwigs didn’t want to mention, let alone repeat, 2022’s Slap Heard Round the World. Host Jimmy Kimmel did not cooperate with this wish, quipping in response to the beige carpet that it showed “how confident we are that no blood will be shed.” In fact, Kimmel’s repeated references to The Slap throughout the awards ceremony provided about the only edgy (and funny) material all evening.

But star-on-star assaults are nothing compared to the wish to camouflage the overriding threat facing Hollywood: its imminent demise.  The Oscars are always self-aggrandizing, but this year the hyped-up glitz felt desperate.  So desperate that the Academy saw fit to run a commercial for this summer’s release of “The Little Mermaid” as part of the ceremony. Anything to get people back into theaters, I guess. But “Top Gun: Maverick” for Best Picture? Seriously? And I say this as someone who very much enjoyed the movie.

Which is more than I can say about a lot of the others. Usually I try to see all the top nominees, but after seeing plenty of them—in theaters and streaming—I didn’t see the point.

And yes, this means you, Everything Everywhere All at Once. I second the Guardian review, which referred to it as Nothing Nowhere Over a Long Period of Time. However, I concede that the exuberant cast and crew who kept traipsing up to collect their statues seemed like really nice and fun people. I also admire Michelle Yeoh for using her moment in the spotlight to run a piece in the New York Times the very next day to shine a light on the deplorable suffering of women and girls in humanitarian disasters.

It’s a far cry from suffering through another season of a so-so awards ceremony and films. Still, with Hollywood run aground on the pandemic and streaming shoals, and trying to break free through CGI, special effects, and lots of noise, I see little on offer to lure me back into theaters. Which is a shame, since I used to love going to the movies.

At least it’s a great achievement that this year possibly retired #OscarsSoWhite and #OscarsSoViolent. Now let’s hope for the retirement of #OscarsSo”Meh.”

Celebrating Oscar best-picture winner “12 Years a Slave”

I did not want to see 12 Years a Slave. It sounded like a magnificent movie that was nearly impossible to watch. But I went anyway, to keep up with Oscar best-picture nominees. I’m glad it won–now more people will overcome their wish to look away, and go see it.

How people direct their gaze is an important motif in the film. The camera lingers on the brutality of a system that subjugated millions of black men, women, and children. Protagonist Solomon Northrup, who has lived a comfortable life as a free man until he is kidnapped and sold into slavery, looks directly at people. A fellow captive aboard the steamboat delivering them down the Mississippi to their enslavement advises, “Survival’s about keeping your head down.” Indeed, slaves who have never known freedom avert their eyes. In contrast, the menacing, sometimes psychotic gazes of white owners are as crucial to the system of terror as whips and lynching ropes. Plantation mistresses stare silently from the porches above.

The most compelling scene is an interrupted lynching. Solomon, rope around his neck, dangles from a tree an inch above the mud. For hours, he tries to maintain contact with the yielding ground by shuffling his feet back and forth in a tortured tip-toe. Meanwhile, his fellow slaves come in and out of their cabins and go about their business without looking directly at him.

Solomon survives only to endure years of even worse agony until his release is finally secured. Traveling safely on the road returning him to freedom, he gazes intently at those left behind on the plantation.

We, too, have traveled far from those times. Yet around the time 12 Years a Slave was released, news broke that an African-American freshman had been tormented by his white suite mates at San Jose State University. They taunted him with names like “Three-fifths” and “Fraction,” displayed a Confederate flag, and placed a bicycle lock around his neck. This went on for weeks, until the freshman’s parents intervened. Once the outcry became impossible to ignore, the tormentors were suspended. Some face criminal hate-crime charges.

But how long were eyes averted? The victim himself apparently tried to survive by keeping his head down. So did the many who were silent witnesses to his ill treatment. A report describing widespread racial discrimination on campus had been shelved by the administration two years earlier.

In the wider world, too, we look away while African-Americans still struggle to gain traction. The unemployment rate among blacks is twice that of whites. Housing discrimination and de facto school segregation are widespread. Racial disparities in drug laws have resulted in mass incarceration of African-American males. Voting rights are under attack. Young men are treated with suspicion, and sometimes even killed, because of the color of their skin. And while it’s true that President Obama has won the presidency twice, it’s also true that racial animus has fueled a concerted effort to delegitimize him.

This is not the antebellum South. It’s happening now. How long will we continue to avert our eyes? 12 Years a Slave–this unwatchable must-see–forces us to look directly at America’s horrific history so we may come to terms with our unreconciled past and ongoing shame.