George Clooney at the Oscars 4
It has become a tradition for me to watch the Academy Awards with my mom each year, so I’ve heard my share of acceptance speeches. This year, George Clooney started the night off right with the best one I can recall. A winner in the best supporting actor category for Syriana, Clooney was almost preternaturally calm, with none of the usual Oscar-winner discombobulation. At turns self-deprecating, witty, and humble, Clooney managed to be poignant without gushing, and made a thoughtful political point with subtlety and heart.
Alluding to charges that Hollywood is out of touch with America, Clooney noted that maybe that’s not such a bad thing. The movies have often been on the vanguard of important social movements, and artists—including film producers, directors, and actors—have served as a canary-in-the-mine for threats to freedom of expression. Clooney’s other nominated movie, Good Night, and Good Luck, deals squarely with this last issue, and Clooney mentioned two other examples—breaking the AIDS taboo and recognizing a black actress way back in 1939—where the Academy was ahead of the curve.
Hollywood politics embodies some of the worst traits of limousine liberalism, with blind party loyalty, utterly naïve economics, and at times shocking hypocrisy. (For example, Martin Sheen, a millionaire many times over—and, incidentally, one of my favorite actors—has openly attacked “the rich” with a straight face.) Nevertheless, when it comes to coaxing a sometimes unwilling world into modernity—with its cosmopolitan attitudes, tolerance of differences, and shades-of-gray ambivalence—the film industry does a great service.
Bravo, George, for sounding such an elegant and thoughtful note on a night more often associated with blubbering thank-you lists and smug self-congratulation.
Update: Clooney’s speech is now available online. (I looked for it at the time of the original post, but I couldn’t find it then.) Thanks to Ranjit Mathoda for the link. P.S. Gotta love the Chinese subtitles!
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Did anyone else notice how many times in the Oscars people waxed poetic about how movies are best watched in the theater amongst strangers? While that may be the case, now, it isn’t necessarily always going to be the case. The experience and expense will be better in the home, soon. I’ll miss sitting in the dark with strangers though. Maybe I should invite some over to my home theater. I actually missed the very beginning of the Oscars, but Youtube.com has Clooney’s speech. Glad to have seen it. Which maybe goes to show TV is best watched in snippets on a website? Wonder how long it’ll take for Youtube to start sanitizing its content.
I did notice that. I think maybe Hollywood is running scared from the coming home theater revolution. It was eerie to hear it so many times…
Personally, though I love movies, I frequently find the behavior of my fellow patrons unbearable. Talking, bringing kids, and (still!) cellphones—it’s almost enough to keep me away altogether. I certainly look forward to the narrowing of the theater gap. Movies at my place! (Once I have a place.)
Clooney didn’t mention that the black actress in ‘39 and her escort were forced to sit at a table of their own in the back of the hall.
Clooney had his facts wrong in other ways, too. Hollywood didn’t start making civil-rights-friendly movies until well after most Americans outside the old Confederacy already understood that segregated lunch counters and buses were barbaric.
As for the rest…well, it’s easy for Hollywood to congrate itself on having been in the vanguard of sexual liberation, and I might even give them credit for that if sex didn’t sell so well.
It looks like I jumped the gun in praising Clooney’s politics—his sentiments were, it seems, more Hollywood self-congratulation. That’s a shame. Thanks to Eric for setting me straight. (See Eric’s post on this subject at Armed and Dangerous for some more edification—and amusement.) The rest of the speech was good, though, and I still recommend giving it a look if you didn’t see it live.
I’d like to raise another issue a friend mentioned to me, and which I failed to address in the original post: what’s perhaps most annoying about Hollywood politics is that so many celebrities air their often wildly uninformed positions as if they were important (the opinions and the opiners). People will listen just because they’re famous, but that doesn’t mean they know what the hell they’re talking about—a fact often lost on the celebrities. (If you want to see them get their comeuppance, puppet style, rent Team America some time.)