Ranting On...Shoddy Oscar Journalism

I will admit that normally I plan out my rants and my posts for the week in advance.  I will always leave room for whatever major thing going on in the news is particularly topical (hence the Dear John letter yesterday), but I do plan a number of my articles in advance, so as to make sure I can equal my twice daily goal of posts.

But on occasion, I'm reading something on the bus and I get into a tizzy that makes me so angry that I decide I need to get it onto this blog and vent about some injustice in the world.  We all have that feeling sometimes (it's part of the reason I have a blog, if we're perfectly honest).  So while I may do the rant I had prepared for our traditional Friday rant this weekend, this is going to serve as our rant to start out the Friday festivities.

For those of you who frequent Oscar blogs, you may have already seen Mark Harris's piece about Gravity and the state of this year's Best Actress race or Esther Zuckerman's subsequent piece about the actress field and her general lack of enthusiasm.

Both of these two bring up three chief complaints about the race this year: it's already settled, the nominees are all former winners, and all of the actresses are over 40, thus depriving younger actresses of opportunities on a larger worldwide stage (that last one is more discussed by Zuckerman, admittedly).  To all of these complaints, I cry bull.

The first point is rather easily disproven.  Both Zuckerman and Harris seem to be under the mistaken identity that the entire field is completely settled, which is so infuriating.  One of the worst things about the internet and the impact it has had on journalism is that everyone desperately wants to be “first” to do anything, and this is just the same in entertainment journalism.  It’s October-the only thing that’s locked about the Oscar race is that Entertainment Weekly will say the host did a good job and then three months later complain about how stale the ceremony was.

While Zuckerman and Harris’s assumed frontrunner five (Emma Thompson, Judi Dench, Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock, and Cate Blanchett) all do make sense, and anyone currently predicting them wouldn’t be faulted for doing so, it’s hardly settled.  Thompson, Blanchett, and Dench could all three be marketed as in a comedy, so the Globes will add at least one more name to the mix in the drama categories, and as Rooney Mara can attest, landing a key fifth place nomination at the Globes for drama is always a plus.  The public hasn’t reacted to either Streep’s or Dench’s performances, and as far as I can tell, no one has seen Thompson’s, giving all three women a chance to lose out on their nomination.  Plus, there’s a sea of other Oscar favorites from Julia Roberts to Kate Winslet to Amy Adams just waiting to be picked.  Not to mention that Oscar has never A) gone with all former winners in a female acting field and B) never had a lineup of all women over the age of forty.  So to call the race in October is complete idiocy, regardless of whether by some stroke of fate they end up chancing into a correct prediction.

The second and third problems, though, are what truly bug me.  Oscar pundits are always trying to call a film or an actor a “lock” too early (it’s nauseating, but even I find myself doing it from time-to-time).  The second and third points head over to sexism and ageism (I’m aware Zuckerman is a woman, but I stand by my below points).  The reason I say sexism and ageism is because they go on-and-on about how diverse and inclusive and exciting the men’s field is.  This rubs me the wrong way because either they aren’t paying attention or they don’t know their Oscar history (which clearly isn’t the case for Harris at least-I’m not as familiar with Zuckerman).

The Best Actress race regularly honors younger women, almost in an alarmingly ageist way.  You want to know how many men under the age of thirty have won the Best Actor Oscar? One, Adrien Brody, and he turned thirty a few weeks later.  Want to know how many actresses have won their lead category before the same age? Thirty.  To say with a straight face that one time, this one time, a field might only include actresses over the age of forty while the Best Actor field might not is so completely ridiculous.  The best actor field has had all 40+ actors twice in the past six years alone!  The Academy has long had a huge issue, in fact, with honoring younger men with Oscars and nominations, so to be able to say with a straight face that this is an issue for younger actresses is absurd and just plain stupid, particularly the year after we saw one of the most age diverse in Oscar history for Best Actress.

The reality is that Hollywood has traditionally been a difficult terrain for women “of a certain age.”  Only nine women in Hollywood history have won the Best Actress award past the age of fifty (nineteen for the men).  Older women have traditionally not been given the same box office vehicles as men.  Younger actresses are frequently paired with older men as love interests in Hollywood movies.  Think of, say a 34-year-old Helen Hunt and a 60-year-old Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets for your average cinematic pairing.

Thankfully, we have seen some progress in the past few years in this regard.  Women like Meryl Streep, Melissa McCarthy, Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock, and Jennifer Aniston, are all over the age of 40 and regularly open major Hollywood films.  The fact that five accomplished actresses have managed to rise to the top of the respective acting races is a reason to celebrate, not to complain.  And I think that Harris and Zuckerman should take a look at the larger picture the next time that they decide to try to find some way to fill the Oscar conversation until the precursors start.