Oscars Don't Matter, Except When They Do

Plus: What To Watch, What We Did, and What's Making Us Happy by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when a heavily hyped book [saw its fortunes sour considerably](. It was the week when [Harvey Weinstein went on trial](. And -- perhaps because of the sheer quantity of awfulness everywhere -- it was the week when [shocking allegations about the Grammy Awards]( somehow seemed to remain relatively under the radar. Let's get to it. Opening Argument: Oscar's Don't Matter, Except When They Do We do this every year, really: recognize the bias that worms its way into awards nominations, and then chastise ourselves and each other for caring about awards. Let's get this out of the way: Of course the Oscars aren't reliable at choosing what is most meritorious. Of course Green Book was not the best film of 2018. No, bad decisions are not, in and of themselves, a surprise. No, true artists don't need awards to feel good about themselves. Yes, art should be its own reward. The fact remains that there are some serious problems with the Cool Shrug as a response to things like a failure, over and over, to nominate women directors. For one thing, where does a little kid get ideas about the movies? Especially a little kid whose parents are not cinephiles? Where does that kid first see directors, see what they do, see them with cameras? Whether they should or should not, there's a good chance some of those images come from press coverage, and press coverage certainly cares about the Oscars. Yes, that ten-year-old should find her way to an art house theater. Sure. She should find gems on Netflix, sure. But Jo and Amy had this argument in Little Women, right? About whether we write stories about the things that are important, or about whether writing stories about things makes them important. Is it really hard to imagine that no matter how hard a kid growing up caring about film is going to get the sense that the stories that matter are the stories where everyone dresses up to throw them a party? How can a young person be expected not to absorb a pecking order of stories where the ones that matter the most are the ones that win the trophies? Moreover, film producer Franklin Leonard [made a great point]( on the day before the nominations were announced: "Tomorrow a bunch of folks will try to make the argument that the Academy doesn’t decide which movies get made each year, which is true, but never forget that almost everyone who does decide which movies get made - directly and indirectly - is in the Academy." In other words, even if the decision to nominate a film doesn't matter, the decisions on which films to nominate and which films to back and participate in and fund and support seem inexorably intertwined. If the people who are in the Academy don't vote for women directors, why wouldn't that translate into a failure to back their work? If nominations aren't important as a problem, aren't they important as a symptom? And, too, it's not simply a matter of counting up who gets nominated and noting discrepancies and snubs, not that this wouldn't be enough to suggest something was wrong. It's that there are narratives that emerge from more specific ideas about when people are and are not nominated for particular work that say a lot about what opportunities are being offered. It's impossible to miss, for instance, how often black women who are nominated for awards are playing maids or enslaved women, or are otherwise performing specifically race-driven suffering. As opposed to, say, Lupita Nyong'o in Us , a film that's certainly racially conscious, but that doesn't cast her in a stereotypically suffering role. Or consider the fact that it's very common for actors to be nominated for portraying people with disabilities they don't actually have while actors who actually have disabilities are usually not cast in the first place and would probably not be nominated for the "transformation" of acting with a disability they have to begin with. As long as it's especially admired to "transform" in that sense, that says something about how the Academy (full of, again, producers and actors and directors and others) think about disability -- as a costume that it's impressive to be able to pull off. And finally: Sure, industries shouldn't need to get up and throw themselves parties, and give themselves trophies, and it's all very silly. But if you're a director like Barry Jenkins, whose Moonlight seemed much too small to even be nominated when it was in Toronto in September, but which won best picture by the following February, doesn't that validation give you encouragement? Isn't that one way to say to people that their work is valued, particularly if they make work that hasn't historically been valued? If people are going to be patted on the back with great fanfare, shouldn't everybody get a chance at that? At that feeling of validation and victory, at whatever increase in your stock you get from it (I think the answer is pretty much: sometimes that's a lot, and sometimes it's not much)? No, it doesn't matter matter, and yes, Jennifer Lopez is fine, and so forth, and those are very savvy notes to make and everything. But Mark Harris [noted in Vanity Fair]( that Lopez probably would have had a better shot at a nomination had she not been playing a woman who confidently used her sexuality to take advantage of rich men, and that -- and the mentality that drives that -- those things matter a little. We Recommend: Shrill is back today (January 24) for a new season on Hulu. [If you missed it]( last year, please don't deprive yourself again. Everything about The Grammy Awards seems to be in flux at the moment, but they're still set to air Sunday night on CBS, and a PCHH episode wrapping them up will be there for you on Monday. On January 29, Netflix will drop its latest entry in the "if you are a cable network with a show that works, we are coming to try to eat your lunch": Next In Fashion, hosted by Tan France and Alexa Chung, which is their take on the Project Runway template. What particular blend of factors you enjoy in a competitive reality show is as individual as your Netflix login (which is to say: sometimes not all that individual). But I like this show for its increased focus on actual design as opposed to a desperate race to complete garments that don't look absurd. What We Did This Week: [Awkwafina Image]( Zach Dilgard/Comedy Central I [talked to Weekend Edition]( about ten (!) films from women directors that came out in 2019 and are well worth your time. Glen [spent some time]( with the new Armando Iannucci show Avenue 5, which he will tell you gets stronger as it goes. Stephen [asked to hear from bands playing South By Southwest]( and he really does mean it. I've been out most of this week with a lousy cold, but fortunately, [the show carried on]( Our episode on best picture nominee Ford v. Ferrari (which my brain really struggles not to call Fast v. Furious) dropped on Wednesday, with Bilal Qureshi in our fourth chair. [I dove into Comedy Central's show]( Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens, which has an unwieldy title that gives you a little insight into one of the things it's grappling with: who Awkwafina is, who Nora Lum (her real name) is, and who Nora Lin (her character on the semi-autobiographical show) is. [Our Friday show]( finally brings me together with Barrie Hardymon and Christina Tucker to talk about Netflix's Cheer and USA's Dare Me, two projects with two very different, but somehow related, takes on competitive cheerleading. What's Making Us Happy: Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - Barrie: [Project Runway]( - Christina: [You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance by Chani Nicholas]( - Linda: [The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open]( What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: [pchh@npr.org](mailto:pchh@npr.org?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback) Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can [sign up here](. Looking for more great content? [Check out all of our newsletter offerings]( — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! 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