The State of the Race, The State of the Union

The Oscar race feels as disconnected from American culture than it has ever been. The discussion of film awards has turned into a discussion of art and politics. Women disappearing from the Oscar movies, a voting body made up mostly of elderly white males, Martin Luther King’s relationship to LBJ, LBJ’s image among Americans, the Civil Rights movement and what it means to today. Now that Selma’s highest awards hopes fell victim to the same types of sentiments that downed Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (interpretations of the official story) focus has shifted to American Sniper, its accusers and its apologists, its message and its intent. How much money it will make and why. What damage its popularity might cause, and to whom. What good might come of it. The American hero everyone was talking about on Martin Luther King, Jr. day was not Martin Luther King, Jr. but Chris Kyle.

Theories are now being formulated as to why he’s the hero Americans really want and need, to the tune of a potential $350 million box office take. Critics rally in support of the film. Both it and Selma received the rare A+ from Cinemascore. The two films could not be more starkly divided up to and including King’s assassination coming at the hands of an American sniper.

At the beginning of President Obama’s first term, liberals were hopped up on the notion that Obama would end both wars (he did not promise to end the war in Afghanistan). This 15 year debacle has created its own divide among Americans and rages on to this day. A mess and a quagmire started by the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 by Al Qaeda, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Saddam Hussein. But the Bush administration took the shock of the moment and seized the opportunity to take out a dictator and free up the oil reserves for easy milk-shake drinking in the Middle East. We were lied to about the war, misled about weapons of mass destruction and to date the death count stands at:

The Iraqi civilian death toll seems impossible to accurately measure but is presumed to be over one million dead since the invasion. While deaths of American soldiers have slowed since Obama took over, they are still in harm’s way each and every day we all walk around free. The toll taken on American soldiers and Iraqi and Afghani citizens is immeasurable. What American Sniper does is give many Americans the chance to grieve the fallen soldiers, and perhaps to feel as though it was not fought in vain, this useless and hopeless war.

In 2009, Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq film’s $17 million box-office take sprung from the notion that it was a liberal, anti-war film, one that did not put enough blame on the enemy. It did not give us an enemy, in fact, because in that film Americans are defending themselves against citizens with IEDs who are fighting against the American invasion. They are undefinable, hard to locate and they are everywhere.

But we are a war-prone nation. We spend more money on defense than we do anything else. Our military is, in many ways, the backbone of our country’s economy. There are whole populations out there in the “flyover states” that are under-served by Hollywood. It took Clint Eastwood’s sensibilities to earn the prestige to get into the Oscar race, and his war sensibilities to woo the conservatives who see Eastwood as one of their own after her performance at the Republican National Convention four years ago.

The teeny tiny insular world of Oscar has now crossed over with the “silent majority” of conservative Americans who are arguing the film alongside the film people. Usually film people are written off by the majority of conservatives. Now, with Sniper in the mix, it’s brought the two worlds together. Michael Moore and Seth Rogan are getting hit with violent fury. Some critics are receiving death threats. Meanwhile, on Oscar Island, voters are simply enjoying the nice, safe films they’ve picked for Best Picture outside the two controversial ones.

The irony of the debate, though, was that when Selma’s turn came up, the conversation somehow found a way to be about anything but this American hero, someone who led the civil rights movement and drove the Voting Rights Act, along with many other brave Americans. They have been marginalized and deemed less important than maintaining the pristine image of Lyndon B. Johnson. Chris Kyle, however, doesn’t need to be deemed a hero by the mainstream press or film critics — the people are doing that for him. A badass sniper, a brave man who had 160 confirmed kills which included women and children. Some film critics are defending the movie, saying it is decidedly anti-war. Other critics disagree. It is turning out to be the kind of film that really tells you more about your own beliefs than it does make any kind of broad statements either about the war in Iraq or about who Kyle was. The overriding message of it seems to be: you can’t escape what that kind of killing does to a person.

The sentiment towards the Iraq war is changing the way the sentiments about Vietnam happened after Oliver Stone’s Platoon came out. American Sniper offer Americans the chance to redeem their forgotten and dead soldiers who are fighting a war no Americans wanted to fight in the first place (well, a lot of them surely did and still do). The scary part comes in when Obama is brought into it. Or Hilary Clinton. Here are few tweets to Michael Moore from the various tweets of his on the subject of American Sniper:

@MMFlint Hey stupid, if it were not for American Snipers there would be more dead Americans!

— MB (@harleysurferMb) January 19, 2015

@MMFlint you need to be the spokesfatty for the whale Hitlary clinton!

— Big Kahuna (@BigKahuna919191) January 19, 2015

@TherapyDogsRock @MMFlint Exactly, Laurie. This fat ass Jabba wannabe needs to be sent overseas to learn the Soldier experience or #STFU.

— A-Kross كافر (@TheKrossSays) January 19, 2015

@Thomasismyuncle @AdamBaldwin @MMFlint Classic liberal tactic. Try to change the facts in a futile attempt to evade. He's too fat for that.

— Jeff257 (@Jeff257) January 19, 2015

@MMFlint YOU and your COMMIE SCUM have NO WAY of understanding what REAL #AMERICANS feel — you FAT ASS COMMIE MOTHERF**KER- EAT SHIT & DIE!

— KAFFIR_GEORGE (@ParalegalGeorge) January 19, 2015

But this tweet is my favorite — in reference to Michael Moore bringing up our unjust invasion of Iraq:

@MMFlint America invaded Nazi Germany even though they didn't attack us. Historians lick our butt for it.

— Comrade Commissar (@CommissarOfGG) January 19, 2015

What is most sadly ironic is the fear in the minds of so many who covered the media storm around Selma, the Maureen Dowds who were so insulted at the liberties were taken and what that might mean to people “not sophisticated enough” to understand that it was just a movie. IT’S NOT JUST A MOVIE, they shouted from the rooftops. History is at stake! A few of them even huffed and puffed about it being shown to schoolchildren, as though any black kid or white kid growing up in America would not benefit from seeing the story of Martin Luther King — just because of the way LBJ was portrayed.

And then those same people just brushed off what kinds of stories Sniper viewers might take home from that film. The people who will see Sniper will far outnumber those who will see Selma. No one is worried in the least bit about what that says about our American involvement in Iraq. I agree that, with both films, a sophisticated audience is required, but I’m watching how the most unsophisticated are taking the film American Sniper absolutely the wrong way.

Tonight, President Obama will give his State of the Union address to the people of America. He will have to face down an all Republican Congress, a disconnected public, continuing racial divide and the white majority’s frustration with that tension. Sounds a like the Oscar race, doesn’t it?

Has this country changed at all for the good? Hard to say. Have the Oscars changed at all for the good? Hard to say. After 16 years watching their voting I’ve seen them shift to actually pay attention to critical acclaim over box office success. Part of this was necessary because the box office has given itself over to fast food. Part of it was simply due to the Oscars changing their date by pushing it back a month. That meant that the race is no longer very interested in factoring in public opinion along with critical acclaim, but rather, it’s reverted to something decided on by studios, bloggers and critics.

The Oscar voters have such a small window to vote and many of them, by their own admission, don’t see all of the movies. They certainly did not seem to want to even things out among the sexes this year, nor among the minority contenders. Division has never been more dramatic at the Oscars and it will have never been more dramatic than it will be at tonight’s State of the Union.

One thing does seem clear, though, Americans — be they sophisticated 1%-ers, Oscar voters, or dudes who stockpile weapons and live in caves in the Pacific Northwest — they like to be on the right side of white history.

The thing no one really talks about is that Rory Kennedy’s Last Day’s in Vietnam is also up for Best Documentary. It’s about how we cut and run and left Vietnam mostly devastated. It’s an opportunity to remember the harm we cause when our wars are fought for the wrong reasons, either to secure power, grab wealth, or pursue faulty ideology.

I suspect that with all of this heat surrounding American Sniper, the Oscar voters will want to avoid all of that and will continue to do what they always have done in times of strife: put their head in the sand and wait for it to go away. That will make it easy for them to vote for the frontrunner, Boyhood. I suspect that Sniper is still a threat to win in some categories, like Best Actor or Screenplay. This was a tale of two movies both playing at the AFI fest, two very different directors, two different heroes, two different Americas. I am left with the irony of the actor playing Chris Kyle being the one who knocked out the actor playing Martin Luther King, Jr.

Predictions

Best Picture
Boyhood 
American Sniper
Birdman
The Imitation Game
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Selma
Whiplash
The Theory of Everything

Best Actor

Michael Keaton, Birdman 
Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything 
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
Steve Carell, Foxcatcher

Best Actress
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Marion Cotillard, 2 Days, 1 Night
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything

Supporting Actor
JK Simmons, Whiplash
Edward Norton, Birdman
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
Robert Duvall, The Judge
Ethan Hawke, Boyhood

Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Laura Dern Wild
Emma Stone, Birdman
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Meryl Streep, Into the Woods

Director
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Alejandro G. Inarritu, Birdman
Wes Anderson, Grand Budapest Hotel
Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game
Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher

Original Screenplay
Alejandro Inarritu et al, Birdman
Wes Anderson, Grand Budapest Hotel
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler
E. Max Frye, Dan Futterman, Foxcatcher

Adapted Screenplay
Damien Chazelle, Whiplash
Graham Moore, The Imitation Game
Jason Hall, American Sniper
Anthony McCarten, The Thoery of Everything
Paul Thoman Anderson, Inherent Vice

Editing
American Sniper
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Whiplash
The Imitation Game

Cinematography 
Grand Budapest Hotel
Birdman
Mr. Turner
Unbroken
Ida

Production Design
Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Mr. Turner
Into the Woods
Interstellar

Sound Mixing
American Sniper
Interstellar
Whiplash
Unbroken
Whiplash

Sound Editing
American Sniper
Interstellar
Birdman
Unbroken
The Hobbit

Costume Design
Into the Woods
Grand Budapest Hotel
Maleficent
The Imitation Game
Mr. Turner

Original Score
Theory of Everything
Grand Budapest Hotel
Interstellar
The Imitation Game
Mr. Turner

Foreign Language Feature
Wild Tales (Argentina)
Ida (Poland)
Leviathan (Russia)
Tangerines (Estonia)
Timbuktu (Mauritania)

Documentary Feature
CitizenFour
Last Days in Vietnam 
Virunga
Finding Vivien Maier
The Salt of the Earth

Animated Feature
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Princess Kaguya
Big Hero 6
The Box Trolls
Song of the Sea

Visual Effects
Interstellar
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
Captain America
X-Men

Makeup
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Guardians of the Galaxy
Foxcatcher

Song
“Glory” (Selma) 
I’m Not Gonna Miss You “Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me”
Everything is Awesome (Lego Movie)
“Grateful” from “Beyond the Lights”
Lost Stars, Begin Again