it is waste of time to talk about oscar and its winners
except maybe to spread the word that the oscars are a waste of time- far too many people, including “film buffs”, critics and the media take them seriously as a guide to quality!
It makes me laugh when people say “this woman” or “that woman” won an award simply because “it was time a female won an award.”
Such statements are blatantly sexist themselves and reek of tokenism, as if “her” film actually wasn’t that great after all…but it was close enough to being great, so we’ll give her the Oscar because a woman has never been named Best Director.
I’m certain Ms. Bigelow would like to be recognised for her achievement in cinema, not as some charity case.
Anyway, as someone who has strong opinions about warfare, I would like to experience “The Hurt Locker” for myself and draw my own conclusions as to its message and the potency of it.
@Kenji
I agree with you completely about the attention given to the Oscars (including this site!!!!)
And also “Waste of time” is well expressed.
Instead of focusing on the Oscars, there is still a long long way for The auteurs to create a halfawy proper databank.
Rüdiger:
Yeah, the omissions in the Auteurs databank are staggeringly asinine.
Nevermind all the suggestions I’ve made. However, “Twilight” makes the list? I thought this site was about the greatest films of all-time, not the most popular.
There hasn’t been a great winner since Unforgiven.
Mark, there have been many many better films by women imo than The Hurt Locker; women should have had far more opportunities to direct and more recognition, but Hollywood has never been strong on such things. Once the BAFTAS had picked Bigelow and her film, then the scrutiny on the Academy was greater and the Oscars are regularly awarded to make up for previous failings and in recognition of previous work- it was predictable too that Bullock and Bridges would win. Maybe the voters at the academy in their wisdom believed The Hurt Locker was the best film of the year anyway, after all lots of people have rated it highly, but i also think there was a certain expectation that it was time a woman won, doing her chances no harm at all. Hollywood is of course still deeply sexist, i think i’m being more cynical than sexist. The ingrained sexism has been appalling; all these years of Oscars and this is the first time a woman’s won! The Hurt Locker ticked the right boxes over American self-image too. It didn’t just win because it was directed by a woman. Anyway, i rarely agree with Oscar awards and this year is no exception.
Oh and as to The Hurt locker being an anti-war film, well Bigelow dedicated the Oscar to the brave women and men in the military who risk their lives; did she make a general anti-war or specifically anti Iraq war statement?
Complimenting the troops doesn’t make you pro-war.
-precisely cos it doesn’t really challenge the Iraq war, the US motives, but instead comforts the establishment and Americans that their guys are brave heroes out there to save lives at their own risk-
Maybe that’s a fair criticism of the film’s politics, kenji. Personally, I think there’s an implicit criticism of the US motives, etc. in its characterization of James, but there’s certainly nothing explicit. To the extent that it’s substatively apolitical (while not anti-war exactly, it’s not clearly pro-war either), I think its politics are informed by Boal’s time embedded in Iraq, a situation where—like deployments themselves—trying to interpret on the fly can be, well, a much stickier matter than it is for civilians with the time, distance, and resources for reflection. To me, it’s tempting to read the film as a counterpuntal to In the Valley of Elah, for which Boal’s writing was also the germ, but which takes a rather different approach.
“Instead of focusing on the Oscars, there is still a long long way for The auteurs to create a halfawy proper databank.”
i hope this comment Rudiger goes to the disputed “members” around here and not about the film database because during the recent months, a lot of work has been put by many, including myself to build this databank with a rich variety of non-mainstream films.
Complimenting people who are paid to kill simply because they are born on a different spot on the earth than others (follow one’s country and govt right or wrong) is to my mind pro-war, Jah.
War, nationalism and imperialism are far too respectable, and still treated as heroic by the media, not in US alone
Matt, i hated In the Valley of Elah too. I don’t think either The Hurt Locker or The Valley of Elah challenged the war. To not challenge the war, the politics of The Hurt Locker are effectively pro-war imo. To not challenge a controversial status quo seems to me to be to accept it.
Jah,
Thanks for sharing that with us. I just don’t that the message was conveyed clearly in the film.
The best moment of the Oscars last night? Young Frankenstien in the horror tribute.
i’m gonna pop a blood vessel if i see anymore people whining about people talking about the oscars.
- To not challenge the war, the politics of The Hurt Locker are effectively pro-war imo-
Perhaps, but that’s an impossible standard to hold up. By that logic every American film (as well as every British film, etc.) that doesn’t challenge the war by way of not depicting it at all (ignoring it, essentially) is essentially even more pro-war than one that at least . I think that politcally our views of the war in Iraq are largely similar. I don’t however, feel like I necessarily want or need to have any film the deals with US soldiers to be a bully pulpit from which to expound upon the problems with the overarching political. I tend to dislike baldly didactic films. Still, as I said I don’t think it’s as apolitical as advertised. As the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum put it :
“This is a film whose most courageous character is shown to be myopic to the point of insanity when it comes to perceiving Iraqi people in his midst — or at least one Iraqi kid in particular whom he supposedly knows and has some fondness for. He’s so convinced that this kid has been killed by a terrorist that he can’t even see the kid greeting him. This kind of blindness surely implies something about American perceptions of the Iraqi people, the ones whom American soldiers have allegedly been fighting for. It even, I would argue, implies something political.”
I would add that this is, not coincidentally, the episode in the film that’s most often cited as proof of the film’s lack of realism. Perhaps it’s simply a lapse of the part of the filmmakers, but I tend to read it something like Rosenbaum does. It’s not really about what would a particular soldier do in this particular situation, it’s suggesting something on a much larger scale about how Americans perceive the world around them.
(By the way, I don’t think In the Garden of Elah is a great film either, but it does attempt to deal with the military’s failure to address, or even properly acknowledge, the issue of soldiers with PTSD in the wake of engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if it has had any positive impact of how PTSD is handled going forward, than that’s probably of more practical value than any garden variety anti-war film.)
or people whining about people whining about people talking about the oscars
or people whining about people whining about people whining about people talking about the oscars
Complimenting the troops doesn’t make you pro-war.
Yes, it does. NEWS FLASH: War can’t happen without the troops. That statement has about as much logic as if someone were to state “complimenting suicidal hijackers/bombers doesn’t make you pro-terrorism.”
-War can’t happen without the troops-
Sure it can. All it takes is somebody willing to push a button. And, as Milgram’s experiment makes clear, pretty much everyone is willing to push the button.
Well, Blue K, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you know the background, reasoning (or lack thereof), and psychology of every single young kid who enlists in the military and is stuck in a 4- to 6-year contract. Your response displays a serious lack of empathy, understanding, and awareness.
or people whining about or people whining about people whining about people whining about people talking about the oscars
Well, Blue K, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you know the background, reasoning (or lack thereof), and psychology of every single young kid who enlists in the military and is stuck in a 4- to 6-year contract. Your response displays a serious lack of empathy, understanding, and awareness.
They’re “stuck” in a 4 to 6 year contract because they volunteered. It’d be another thing if we had the draft. It’s not my fault if someone gets duped by the ridiculous military TV ads with the corny ass music. I mean, what do people think they’re going to do in the military? Hello, you become trained killers!!!
And to quote my favorite comedian Bill Hicks (RIP)…
“Gays in the military…here’s how I feel about it, alright? Anyone dumb enough to want to be in the military, should be allowed in. End of fucking story. That should be the only requirement.”
Of course, if we didn’t have such a large and capable (setting politics aside again) volunteer military force, given our current articulation of foreign policy, we would have to have some sort of mandatory military service, so, if nothing else, you can appreciate the individual soldiers on those terms.
Blue – Great Hicks quote, and I happen to agree with it as well.
Blue,
Uh, actually—here, I’ll put it your way—NEWS FLASH: Not everyone in the military is trained to kill people.
it is waste of time to talk about oscar and its winners
No more than anything else is. If someone cares, who gives a shit? Let them care for fuck’s sake. Don’t act all intellectually superior about it.
-They’re “stuck” in a 4 to 6 year contract because they volunteered-
Generally it’s active duty for 2-4, but you can get stop-lossed though the end of your unit’s deployment (however long that may be), which is not at all voluntary.
Of course, if we didn’t have such a large and capable (setting politics aside again) volunteer military force, given our current articulation of foreign policy, we would have to have some sort of mandatory military service, so, if nothing else, you can appreciate the individual soldiers on those terms.
@ Matt,
Yes, this is a valid point. And to be serious for a minute, I’m not totally unsympathetic to the socioeconomic conditions that drive young men and women to join the military. But I do like to play the gadfly of sorts ad push people’s conventional wisdom on issues. The thing about having this large volunteer military is that it makes foolhardy, unnecessary, and immoral wars like the one in Iraq more likely. And this, in turn, just makes the non-military general public be glad that they’re not the ones serving. So they end up saying intellectually untenable and contradictory things like “I’m against the war, but I’m for the troops”, which really ends up being, “I’m against the war, but as long as someone else is fighting it, who really cares?” The reason that Vietnam War came to an end when it did was because there was a draft and it impacted people on a large scale.
Kenji
I thought it won not just cos Oscar knew it was time for a female director (or have the most damaging sexism charges yet), but precisely cos it doesn’t really challenge the Iraq war, the US motives, but instead comforts the establishment and Americans that their guys are brave heroes out there to save lives at their own risk. It’s still of course from a mainly American perspective. Oscars= the hype of mediocrity and ignorance. As for the foreign film oscars well the choices have been as bad as the Best Picture ones, so not having seen the winner i can only assume now it’s hardly likely to be a masterpiece. But maybe they came up with one of the very occasional flukes.