Never mind, David. Guillermo del Toro and his The Shape Of Water won. Gary Oldman wasn't bad either. Can't fight all battles. Could have been worse!

As for speaking out at the Academy Awards: I think they learned their lesson from Michael Moore and no-one is allowed to do that any more. Instant cut-out on the mike disguised as a power surge. Reminds me of that speech Trotsky was going to make in America via telephone.... :):)

Ah, relative chastity, poverty and disobedience....the watchwords of my ever-interesting (to me) life.

In itself this isn't a problem. In the face of deteriorating social and economic conditions across the world it is as much a disaster for the capacity of working people to fight back as "separate but equal". Some FB friends wanted to discuss this, or somthing like it, on AIMN. I was very rude to them but their instincts are acute. They wanted an 'extensive' discussion on the idea of vendetta and its origins in the latin root from which 'vindictive' is derived, the 'vindica', I think, which was a rod or canon for regulating the freeing of slaves and perhaps is where the strange reference to 'the synagogue of the Freedmen" in the epistles comes from. Clearly imperialism provides endless opportunities for vendettas among the oppressed. Lawrence Durrell provides an insight into the way working class movements can be thrown into turmoil by bitter ethnic resentments in his trilogy. The British had it down to a fine art, so much so that it eventually blew up in their faces. But not entirely...India battles the consequences to this day.

Really... I haven't read any Lawrence Durrell. More for the list!

Excellent article. Two quick points: (1) To your list of films which "offered important pictures of American life" I would add "Nothing But A Man".
(2) In the ranks of films which take "a more critical attitude towards the American military and its claims 'to be fighting for freedom'" I would say Anthony Mann's "Men at War" and Samuel Fuller's "The Steel Helmet" and the particularly neglected "Go Tell the Spartans" with Burt Lancaster should have been added by the Academy.

I was referring to more critical films that they included cynically and dishonestly in their patriotic montage.

A couple of starlets early looked really really bad -- I was thinking: where's the third witch? ('Twas beauty killed the beast, 'twas high-definition killed [INSERT STARLET NAME HERE])

Particularly liked Jimmy Kimmel (was he on drugs? warning: extreme smugness may result) and Matthew McConaughey both saying "women and men" instead of the time-tested "men and women" (said coolly) and the polite applause (think black-and-white Monty Python clip of women clapping in front row) that greeted the news Mark Wahlberg's $1.5 mil fee for re-filming scenes of All the Money in the World (and wasn't Christopher Plummer front and center!), (co-star Michelle Williams made $800) would be donated to a women's charity, I forget which one, but so does Wahlberg.

The modern commercial predicament of Hollywood blockbusters -

The rate of profit of biggest Hollywood blockbusters are actually falling. Until the beginning of 2000's a blockbuster would only have to make 200 - 250 % revenue (compared to the actual film production budget) to make it quite satisfactorily profitable. Now the general trend is that a summer or winter blockbuster have to generate 400 - 500 % global revenue (compared to the production budget) to make a considerable profit.

There are two reasons behind this development,

1. In the last 10 - 15 years the international revenue of Hollywood blockbusters begin to sharply outgrow their local or North American revenue. I think now the ratio is about 70% (international) compared to 30% (local). Globally, the number of cinema halls and the number of moviegoers has increased exponentially, especially in China, Southern Africa and Latin America. But along with this rapid expansion of global markets for Hollywood blockbuster movies, the revenue is ever more divided through international revenue sharing schemes with regional film distribution partners and cinema halls and through national business quotas imposed on by the respective countries. Thus making it more and more difficult for the film studios in Hollywood and the primary film distributors in the US to gain an exceptional high rate of return in comparison to the higher costs generated by this increased global presence.

2. The local and global promotional and advertising costs of blockbuster movies has increased enormously in comparison to the actual production costs of those films. In the early days of the blockbuster genre Hollywood studios used to dominate American TV's prime-time while maintaining an influential presence in the European popular television and media. But now, the direct or indirect promotional material of a Hollywood summer or winter blockbusters must have to quite assertively dominate all sectors of global mass and social media for a lengthy period of time to make the movie 'run for its money'.

This is mainly because they are depended less and less on 'word-of-mouth' self generated public promotion, which every field of popular entertainment considers as the most important, decisive and indispensable form of publicity. Hollywood blockbusters are distanced more and more from this sphere of real, daily public discourse because the general public increasingly view them as sort of sophisticated, technically mind blowing pantomimes.

People go to see the present blockbusters, to a considerable degree, to watch remarkably believable and overwhelmingly fun digital special effects, alluring scenic and visual prettiness, elegant and clockwork precise actions-reactions of mostly empty screen idols and lengthy action fight sequences. Previously (until the end of 90's) they used to go to popular movies to enjoy more or less thoughtfully and authentically developed heroes and villains, genuinely emotional and edgy scenes and story development; they felt connected, and could associate themselves with the film.

The Hollywood use to sell public heroes/heroines and intriguing stories presented in a flamboyant visual style. Not any more.

So now the general public flock to watch blockbusters but they do not seriously and substantially converse about the movie content before or after the movie experience. Thus the vastly increased spending on global media promotion to sustain a manipulative campaign to dominate people in their daily life and push them towards movie theaters. Thus the spending of enormous sums on newer and better visual technical marvels, and the gradual saturation and waning of its end audience effect through time.

Therefor attaining a higher rate of profit compatible with the swelling scale of film production and distribution becomes increasingly problematic and difficult for the major US movie studios.

I think, in conjunction with the militaristic and profit-driven urges of the crisis-ridden capitalist class to disillusion and intimidate the public, the above developments in the recent decades are the real motives behind the identity politics, 'Me Too' and super hero patriotism in the present Hollywood.

Remember the end of that poem, though.

He is looking at the statue fallen in the dust.

This is what is inscribed in every heart and the true fate of every Ozymandias.

I haven’t gone to the movies in a few years so I haven’t personally followed any of this.....; however I do watch Star Trek Discovery on CBS.....

Is that a thing?

For me it is seeing as I just don't care to waste one cent of my fixed income on going to a movie theater!; Hollyweird doesn't have anything to offer anyhow!

What is it? I've never heard of it.

I have, but I've never seen it since I don't have a TV.

Great piece by Walsh, beyond my disagreement regarding The Shape of Water, which I find self-congratulatory, crowd-pleasing, and worthy of the worst Spielberg.

One more note about the disgraceful ceremony. The “In Memoriam” segment didn't include, among others, John Mahoney, Tobe Hooper (the director of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"), and Dorothy Malone (who won an Oscar for her great performance in Douglas Sirk's masterpiece "Written on the Wind”!).

Points well taken. The "In Memoriam" segment was also marred by the sudden cut to a long shot of the stage when the screen was highlighting the late, great Jeanne Moreau.

Jeanne Moreau made the current crop of female performers look like Barbie dolls.

I noticed that too - was not happy!

Once again, Mr. Walsh has done an exemplary job of scrutinizing and disemboweling this repugnant event. The WSWS readers have also provided intelligent comments, so there is very little left for me to do but mention a few disturbing things which turned my sensitive stomach. Let's begin with the obvious: #MeToo embracing Oscar®-winner Kobe Bryant defies perverse surrealism. Host Kimmel praising Mark Wahlberg for donating his extra $1.5 million movie fee to #TimesUp is equally grotesque given the actor's ultra-violent and racist adolescent past.*

Then there was the horrific "separate but equal" atmosphere (common at the Oscarcast long before the current hysteria) where African-American celebs introduced African-American singers and Latino celebs introduced Latino singers, etc. Although it has been years since I have watched the ceremony, this year's identity politics orgy was as offensive as the 2002 Academy Awards tribute to Sidney Poitier featuring an Errol Morris short film with an all-black cast of Hollywood personalities... and not one single white testimonial.

*sources: The Guardian: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...

The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost....

But lots of people grow out of their adolescence one way or another. It's called maturity.

I must point out a small error.

My venerable (1964) copy of The Flammarion Book of Astronomy places the circumference of the Earth at very close to 40,000 km. So I would say the Oscar ceremony is at our very antipode, 20,000 km away—as far away as you can get on the surface of the planet.

Just goes to show there's nothing in a pretty face that can hide ugly politics.

"The world is watching us.”

Not according to the ratings.

Good one

Yes.

"By contrast, many of the new “intersectional,” “diverse” films speak primarily to the selfish concerns of perhaps five to seven percent of the population. This helps account for their triviality and insubstantiality. The real problem with those earlier films, from the point of view of the identity politics promoters, was not their “whiteness” or “maleness,” but their orientation toward the overall problems of American society."

What's most upsetting from the point of view of the identity politics promoters is the "trespass" of equality into the entire working class, of all races and genders.

"It is not surprising, then, that viewership for this year’s Academy Awards fell by 19 percent from the previous year, hitting an all-time low."

Theirs is a call to police, confuse and divide workers.

"Why should workers continue to financially support and accept the discipline of organizations that work actively against them?" -The West Virginia teachers strike and the rebellion against the trade unions

It's not that capitalism doesn't mobilise unconscious fantasy. In fact that is virtually its only means of heading off the challenge to it of the vast majority of the world's population. It is that it also mobilises the fantasy of opposition. As though anything you say is an immediate challenge to oppression not because of what you have said but because it is you (this or that victim of heternormativity or whatever it may be) who says it. Genuine challenges to exploitation do not depend on spectacle but argument. Fascism depends on spectacle.

Art is not spectacle, it is crystallisation. It condenses in an image the lived exigency.

The what?

I mean that the lives of workers are exigent, they express the urgency of the universal human struggle for liberation in its particular circumstances, in the nature of a typical working class life at any concrete moment in the history in which it is caught up, its thwarted needs and aspirations, the lines of struggle emerging manifold from these etc.

Art expresses this is in a condensed image, an image so concise and so striking as to both reveal and recall the universal reality in its entirety. It is like the shift in the field in the wave particle conundrum. It picks you up and puts you in front of the perspective...wherever you might have thought you were starting out from.

Even very complex and intimate works can do this. Some of Dali's early works, Chagall, and so on. And of course all acute descriptions and depictions of every kind whatever their subject matter or even their intention (!) do this. Spectacle merely unnerves the gaze.

To be absolutely fair, the proposed Monstergras event proposed for the Sydney Mardigras does this in a limited and somewhat self-mocking way. I mean the cartoon like effect mocks the ordinary suburbaness the parade has achieved and the obviousness mocks itself and homophobia at the same time. It is high camp coming close to genuine art, art of genuine humane and universal worth.

"Genuine challenges to exploitation do not depend on spectacle but argument."

Depend on both the political line of the party and the living movement of the working class under conditions of great revolutionary upheavals.

"For Lenin and Trotsky, no matter how severe the isolation, the political line of the party had to be based on the objective class interests of the proletariat and had to uphold and defend its political independence. They were supremely confident that the historical trajectory of a principled class line would inevitably intersect with the living movement of the working class under conditions of great revolutionary upheavals.

Moreover, this intersection was prepared over a long period through the development of the cadre assembled on the basis of the Marxist program. When Lenin and Trotsky spoke of the "logic of events," it was usually to assert the inevitable exposure and political collapse of the various petty-bourgeois charlatans who, despite their popularity and temporary domination of the mass movement at one or another stage of its development, could not satisfy the historical aims of that movement." -David North’s The Heritage We Defend: “The Nature of Pabloite Opportunism”

Yes, naturally all political challenges to the existing state of affairs derive from the urgent exigencies of the lives of the producers. Bougeois existence is mere negation.

The undeniable moment when the #MeToo campaign revealed it's true self was in its persecution of Kevin Spacey. Weinstein was the test case (and for the record David Walsh was on it), but Spacey was the precision strike. Just weeks before lurid revelations of alleged sexual misconduct against Spacey were blown-up in the media, there were Congressional & Senate hearings (Mark Warren, etc.), broadcast on CNN concerning "House of Cards" as a national security risk because it "told the people too much."

This is a Netflix serial that millions of people have watched, being characterized as a threat to national security, by ruling class paranoia. I encourage everyone to watch (or re-watch) the entire 5 seasons of House of Cards, as this series stands as an artistic achievement head & shoulders above any Hollywood output in the past 6 years. It's impossible to finish the series (Season 6 was to be the last) without Kevin Spacey. That's what's going on (and is left unsaid) at the Oscars.

Quite likely. You don't know what you've got till its gone. You don't know why a man is pulling faces till the assassin steps back and reveals his knife. I was inclined to think Spacey a little over the top. Little did I know this brilliant man, like the cigarette seller in NY, was struggling to breathe.

I saw Spacey's touring "Richard III" when it came to San Francisco and it was fucking brilliant. The entire cast was marvelous, the sets, costumes, music, staging -- everything was what theatre is all about. A massive achievement. And he took this company all around the world for more than a year. It was a privilege to witness.

At the end, while people were leaving the theatre, I shouted out, "Thank you, Kevin!" I hope they could hear me backstage.

I really feel quite ashamed of myself for canning good people like Spacey. This shabby treatment is doubtless meted out at will to actors. It is a crime to degrade the arts in this way. The rights of artists to their work should be inalienable. US actors do not deserve recrucifixion at the hands of this atrocious money-grubbing industry.

How do you show your boobs on the red carpet and then declare men are pigs for looking at them? How does identity with a racial, ethnic, or gender group bestow superior purpose on the individuals in that group? How is dumbing down any discussion of class crises with "personal stories" advance society? How does militarism override all concerns with liberty and humanity?

Answers to these questions (and many more) won't be found in the pablum dispensed Sunday night by a sector of capitalist society so inbred and impervious to relevance that "10,000 miles from reality" is a gross understatement.

This is the problem! Hollywood (and all the visual arts and entertainments) trade so much on female beauty and sexual attractiveness....😏

Not that there's anything wrong with that in and of itself. Good god, you'll have us condemning beauty next.

Seriously, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Did I get on the list?

The article states that:

"However, cynically smuggled into the montage of pro-war and patriotic films, including Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, were clips from a number of films that took a distinctly critical attitude toward the American military and its claims to be 'fighting for freedom,' including William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity, Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, Oliver Stone’s Platoon, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line!"

I did not see that solipsistic spectacle but it appears that one film they did not show a clip from was the 1975 Oscar winning documentary Hearts and Minds which dared to condemn what the U.S. was doing in Vietnam while also presenting views of people who were in favor of that idiotic war such as Walt Rostow and William Westmoreland who tried to claim that Asians do not value life in the same way that Westerners do. Unlike those other Vietnam films mentioned in the article Hearts and Minds also showed what that destructive war was like to the Vietnamese themselves.

Both Patton and M*A*S*H were made by the same studio, 20th Century Fox, released the same year. (1970?)

The days of the The Grapes of Wrath, Modern Times, Citizen Kane, High Sierra, The Best Years of Our Lives are OVER in Hollywood.

Ninety-nine percent of the films produced are designed to psychologically exploit the public through the use of gratuitous sex and violence. When you watch the trailers of upcoming movies you want to cringe because they're inundated with nothing but scenes of mutilation, death, and destruction.

Hollywood is an "industry" and many parts are controlled by gangsters who are only interested in profit not in enhancing the lives of the public with artistic renditions or creative films which would elevate the human spirit. Hollywood, is actually being used to degrade one's spirit by appealing to the most debased parts of human nature.

That's why no one spoke out about the immorality of endless wars or the savagery of income and wealth inequality where some can have everything and others have nothing. No one could partake in such an exploitative industry and have the courage to denounce it. And that's why the speeches seamed so bland, the issues so disingenuous. #ME is just a mechanism for actresses to demand more millions for each film.

One can't expect progressive ideology to emerge from a predatory capitalist business, it would be a contradiction to its own being.

Brilliant! I have been waiting for someone to say what you have so concisely for years. You are absolutely right.

Sounds like a Nazi film rally. Surprised everyone didn't give the Nazi salute as they were applauded. Sickening.

I think Ashley Judd is promising us a 90-year Reich. Since the previous thousand-year one lasted only 12 years, she's being a little less grandiose. I guess.

Let's hope the last picture show isn't (Bogdanovich, last really interesting director-no idea where he went, probably surfing up Noosa way) splashed across a bunker wall to delirious applause.