Oscar "snubs" are being announced!

TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 2021

Portrait of an age: We're still happy for Pretty Young Woman, Emerald Fennell's first film. 

Yesterday morning, it was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Fennell herself was nominated for Best Director and for Best Original Screenplay.

Seven other films were nominated for Best Picture. According to the New York Times, here's the complete total list:

Best Picture nominees:
The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

Those are the eight nominees for Best Picture. It's a widely varied list. We'll offer two statistical tales:

First, as soon as Oscars nominations are announced, the pundit corps starts telling us which actors, director and films have been "snubbed." They do it every year!

Our pundit corps seems unable to grasp an elementary point—everyone can't get nominated! Did Person A or Film X fail to get a nomination? That doesn't automatically mean that the person or film got "snubbed."

That said, victimization is everything now, and so is the concept of snubs. The mathematical problematics are especially pronounced in the Best Director category, a category in which only five nominations are allowed.

Mathematically, if eight films get nominated for Best Picture, and there are only five Best Director noms, at least three directors of nominated films will have to be left out. 

That is simple arithmetic! It will be years before our overwrought pundits are able to figure this out.

Our second tale goes like this:

Of the eight Best Picture nominees, only two failed to be listed as a "Critic's Pick" when reviewed by the New York Times. 

One was The Trial of the Chicago 7. In a long, even-handed review, A. O. Scott said, perhaps correctly, that the film "is a mixed bag...I don’t think, on balance, that this is a very good movie."

The other NYT snub went to Promising Young Woman. It wasn't reviewed by either of the Times' two front-line critics. In a relatively short review, Jeannette Catsoulis trashed it harshly from her first sentence on.

("A hard candy with a sour center, 'Promising Young Woman' turns sociopathy into a style and trauma into a joke." Later: "Buried beneath blonde curls and sheepdog bangs, Mulligan lends depth and sensitivity to a character that’s little more than a vengeful doll.")

There's no "correct" review of this movie, or of any other film. That said, Promising Young Woman has met with a great deal of resistance from major critics. Hopefully for the last time, we're going to tell you why:

The film's protagonist is reacting with horror to a terrible moral outrage. Perhaps more importantly, she's also able to see a key point:

Nobody else even cares.

Reviewers have often failed to see, or to sympathize with, the second part of that equation. They're uncomfortable with the protagonist's moral outrage. They seem to be much more comfortable with the characters who don't care, with the fact that nobody does.

Our suggestion:

This can be seen as a portrait of the values of our modern, upper-end career journalism. It might be seen as a brilliant capture of a largely uncaring, highly performative age.

Have you ever noticed that nobody cares? We'll guess that Fennell has.

The film's protagonist is doubly outraged. Some film critics are not.


20 comments:

  1. "We're still happy for Pretty Young Woman"

    There's a Freudian slip...

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  2. This "report" is idiotic. There weren't enough films in the last year to fill all the categories, much less produce meaningful snubs. Ten films are allowed in the best film category and they could only find eight to nominate.

    Somerby's "narrative" never changes, even when a pandemic results in the worst year for films on record.

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  3. Why does the protagonist even believe that her friend was assaulted (and no one cared) when Somerby cannot believe what any woman says about such a thing without film of the assault. This makes no sense at all. Why would Cassie go on an extended vendetta when there is no evidence her friend had anything happen to her at all, beyond a "victim mentality"? This film should have been snubbed, but wasn't.

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  4. "The film's protagonist is doubly outraged. Some film critics are not."

    This is incorrect. At least some of the film critics are outraged by the way this film USES sexual assault as a sensationalized excuse for violence porn -- largely enjoyed by men, who themselves don't seem to care enough to stop violence against women in real life. Making the uncaring figures in this film female is a device to distance the male audience members from their responsibility so they can safely enjoy chicks fighting back, ineffectively.

    This film is an outrage. That Somerby cannot understand why tells us everything we need to know about where he stands on this issue.

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  5. I think Somerby is incapable of seeing the same film as everyone else. He seems to be latching on to some part that he resonates to (he describes it as a "Dreamscape" and focuses on the lack of caring by others), but ignoring the intent of the writer/director and the artistic whole of the film, the context in which those parts occur. He doesn't care about whatever ELSE the film is about or says to viewers. This is what he does with everything, from Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie songs to newspaper reports and Oprah interviews.

    This way of processing the world is idiosyncratic but also indicative of someone with atypical cognition, perhaps autism or frontal lobe deficit. It reminds me of Sheldon's encounter with his Philosophy professor in one of the recent Young Sheldon episodes, in his highly selective and fixed obsession with parts of what was said, without seeing the whole (much less anyone else's perspective).

    The layering of self-generated despair over other people's work also causes Somerby to misread others' intentions in films and writing. If this is not a pose, I think Somerby should get some help. It isn't normal to condemn the human race and predict doom and gloom the way Somerby does, and it would be sad to think he really feels that way.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The writer seems to have portrayed Cassie as being alone in her outrage and portrayed Nina as having been abandoned by everyone but Cassie.

      How do you know that she and the Academy didn't see the movie with the same perspective as Somerby?

      Delete
    2. Somerby says so. Somerby says:

      "Nobody else even cares.

      Reviewers have often failed to see, or to sympathize with, the second part of that equation."

      Delete
    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    4. "causes Somerby to misread others' ... "

      LOOK WHO'S TALKING!!!!!!!!!

      Delete
    5. He mentioned two critics who seemed not to sympathize with the movie in question and has expressly stated that he thinks that this is becoming a common condition of modern society. He narrowed that somewhat to bbeing emblematic of people who want to play it safe because they care about their jobs more than people. A declaration not different from those made about increasingly rampant selfishness or racism.

      Where the rub comes in is that Somerby doesn't confine those sorts of summations to conservatives, libertarians, and Bernie supporters.


      Delete
    6. Yesterday he said no one recognized that the film was a dreamscape. Go back and read what Somerby has been saying.

      Delete
    7. He feels singular in seeing the movie as being a fantastical allegory as to the modern dilemma of preformative concern as opposed to active sustained concern.

      His take on the movie is not outlandish and bizarre. It doesn't denote a frontal lobe deficit. It is not a dismissal of anyone else who values the film.

      Accusations such as the ones that were issued towards Somerby accurately met with the response of "LOOK WHO'S TALKING!!!"

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    8. “He feels singular...” Of course he does. He likes positioning himself that way.

      Meanwhile, the movie got a 72 rating on metacritic, which is generally favorable. It includes a perfect 100 rating from the San Francisco Chronicle and an 88 from the Washington Post reviewer. So he isn’t “singular.” How ridiculous. IT WAS NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE.

      Delete
    9. Definitionally those on the right are selfish and racist; not owning up to one's true nature is the real concern of performative virtue. Those on the left walk the walk, singularly supporting policies that decrease inequality and increase justice.

      Who is getting snubbed? The bottom 50% percent in America holds less than 2% of total financial wealth, nearly half of what they held 30 years ago.

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