Season's Greedings: Too Many Film Awards, So Little Thought

"Greedy, greedy, greedy!" is how Meryl Streep cheers Awards Season, and the New York Times wasn’t ashamed to quote her post-Golden Globes glee–although the power-protecting Times reported that she "jokingly blurted" those words so as to play down Streep’s saying exactly how she felt. Streep’s crass admission, more than any of the emotional geometry in her screen performances, was revelatory. Greed–for money, for prizes, for recognition, for belonging–is everywhere in movie culture. If you think that’s not news post-Gordon Gekko, then you’ve missed the latest development in the way movies come to your attention.

Awards Season–that period tv addicts suffer from January to March when each week offers a celebrity prizeathon–started much sooner for film critics. Early as September (sometimes late summer) the movie studios decide it’s time to unleash the films with pretensions–hoping to add awards to their residuals checks. But Awards Season’s flu-like symptoms are pandemic. They can be felt year-round in the constant conflation of hype, arrogance and rush-to-judgment that has replaced contemplation and evaluation regarding movies. This isn’t unusual (the excitement of filmgoing includes participating in new sensation) except for when it affects the professional duties of film critics–those journalistic minions who are the only buffer between the public and hard-pressure advertising. This fevered atmosphere corrupts the always potentially corruptible critical profession.

Last December, when critics scrambled to see almost 40 new releases in less than four weeks, an ugly, intimidating event took place. Critics were corralled into a one-time-only screening of Chicago at the theater district’s Loews Astor Plaza, forced to push past throngs of other invitees, i.e., boosters. Miramax had the house "papered" (theater-lingo for constructing the illusion of a popular, sold-out performance by filling empty seats). In truth, this screening was conducted more smoothly than most of the All-Media theater screenings where critics endure being wedged in with action-movie hordes and date-movie parties. Still, the Chicago conflagration was worse. You couldn’t honestly respond to the movie without first reacting to the thunderous/ludicrous enthusiasm of the assembled theater-freaks whooping at every musical number, every name performer’s entrance. When Broadway’s original Chicago star Chita Rivera had her three-second cameo, the crowd of gypsies and freeloaders erupted like Tampa Bay fans at the Super Bowl.

Critics don’t need this kind of high pressure, but the proverbial publicist notion that enjoyment is contagious–that reviewers need to be prodded when to laugh or be excited–dictates the hard sell we are subjected to during Awards Season. Gullible reviewers predictably fall in with the mob. And now the bad-singing, half-dancing stars of Chicago have become the grinning, death’s-head emblems of this coercion. The movie celebrates showbiz cynicism, and easily pleased critics applaud it perhaps as an admission of their own lack of principle; they enjoy being part of the cultural wave in which a movie no longer is considered simply entertainment, but takes the industrial lead as the flagship of a given media conglomerate.

Over recent years, film culture has been reshaped into a monstrosity so omnipresent yet evanescent, so superficial yet basic, that its abnormality now seems normal. The worst of it is when film critics conspire–collude–with the perversity. This year, as never before, critics have seen their roles usurped by publicists turning critics’ judgments into fodder for awards. Critics don’t have a chance to create a popular consensus because they now comply with advertising. And awards-giving has become commensurate with more shrill advertising. Speculation about why criticism has lost impact must conclude that this awards frenzy is part of criticism’s undoing. One local reviewer resigned from the New York Film Critics Circle last year because the pressure of year-end promotion obstructed his concentration and work. No one noticed, but that still didn’t resolve the problem. The majority of his colleagues eagerly accept the year-end promiscuousness. They blather about awards as if they, too, were part of the build-up toward the Oscars–rather than a necessary impartial alternative. We need the alternative more than ever when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences excludes the Palestinian film Divine Intervention from Oscar consideration (the bogus rejection cites Palestine as an unrecognized country, although, as USA Today reports, "the academy has accepted entries from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and neither are states"). It proves the Academy itself is a select and biased group.

My insider complaints about a job that most people consider cushy (if not ideal) seem importunate. But consider this: The treatment that critics tolerate from film companies mirrors the contempt with which those same companies hold the moviegoing public. The rush of movies at year’s end doesn’t get the cultural, intellectual space to mean anything to anybody–there’s just time for the cheap, fast sensations of something rotten like Chicago or insidious like The Hours. When times were sane, critics’ prizes were voted in the new year; now critics announce their prizes earlier and earlier, weakening their own impact. Prizes become more important than what they say.

Critics themselves are partly to blame; each year new critics groups are created but not to improve film appreciation–there’s little discussion of Far From Heaven’s dubious esthetics, The Hour’s triteness or the infantilization in The Two Towers. These new awards groups exist simply for the purpose of bestowing prizes. Variety’s veteran reporter Leonard Klady lists almost two dozen on his Movie City News website: for starters there’s the Boston Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics, Phoenix, Online Film Critics, Kansas City, National Society of Film Critics, Las Vegas, Florida Film Critics, London, Southeastern Film Critics, Seattle Film Critics, Toronto, San Diego, Broadcast Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle, New York Film Critics Online and National Board of Review, who are no longer critics but have streamlined–pioneered–things by simply being an awards-giving body.

There’s powerlessness in these numbers. Who knows who all these critics are? Who cares? I once, as an aspiring critic, wanted to belong to one of the then-few critics groups because it seemed a way to acknowledge good films, make a difference from the Academy’s yearly established canon. But summary judgments have now become part of media hysteria. Today young critics’ desire to join the hoopla may be as misguided as Streepilla herself. Instead of talking about what awards mean, everybody’s got an award to give–or receive. Publicity. It’s a culture-wide narcissistic neurosis.

Miramax understands the psychology of publicity better than almost any other movie company; they bring attention and benefits to any film they decide to make into a public event. But industry-wide manipulation of journalists betrays the purposes of criticism when the unexpected achievement fails to get deserved critical recognition and public attention. The awards game becomes less about understanding what art means to a society and all about constructing market taste. As critics (and readers and moviegoers), we lose our independence to this increasingly predictable behavior.

An encouraging sign occurred this Awards Season when Miramax made one grossly overcalculated offense: they held critics back from Gangs of New York until the last business day before the NYFCC voted (knowing critics have short memories, loving most what they saw last). The plot backfired–to the much worse result of the Circle saluting Far From Heaven. Nothing’s subversive about a movie that authorities can affirm so insistently. The year’s most challenging movies once again went unrewarded.

Criticism is meant to foster independent thinking and highlight unexpected, underpublicized work, but Awards Season favors million-dollar ad campaigns that–like political elections–restructure popular thinking toward favoring wealth and power. What was obnoxious about Streep’s giddy boast was that her Supporting Actress Golden Globe was the result of studio machinations–angling her lead role in Adaptation into the supporting category, not to give the public a better understanding of the film, but simply to win. Streep made the most outrageous show of arrogance since 1992, when those millionaire NBA All Stars decided they needed Olympic medals to go with their loot. It’s blessing enough to get a movie made, privilege enough to get to write about them. The season’s concentration on awards–subordinating critical thought to prizes–degrades us.