ಠ_ಠ

ME

THE FUCK

TOO,

SEB

(No, but seriously: Hang in there, bud — and let us know how it's goin.')

Nah, that's the right opinion. You're good.

I should post in this thread more.

Anyway.

I'm terrified about wanting to read The Uninhabitable Earth, but I do.

No claims of it being particularly 'great,' but the destination was either gonna be this thread or the chatroom, so.

I was snooping through a digital archive of the New York Times from 1981, and was surprised to stumble upon:

SPOILER Show

EDIT 1: Incidentally, I don't recall having ever seen this poster before.

EDIT 2: Ope, here it is. Theatrical re-release.

Yeah, I could be done with Matthew Inman forever.

*thumbs up*

Anyway. Have you tried Jackbox games? That's where my friend-group has drifted lately.

Meanwhile, in the New York Times, an opinion columnist floats the idea of outlawing 'thanking' during speeches.

"Congratulations, winner! Go get your statue and give some kind of speech — but you may not thank anybody."

I kind of like it, to be honest.

Holy shit! It's this fucking guy!

(I thought we keelhauled him!)

(Damn, Trey — that was an awesome post.)

Well, here's what they should be for: "celebrating the best of 'movies,' annually."

(What they are for is: "congratulating the best of movies — and The Oscars — annually.")

The verb is what matters. "Celebrating." Much to Abbie's point, I see The Oscars as a (golden? mm?) opportunity for the film industry to generate enthusiasm, rather than reflect it — a 'teaching moment,' so to speak.

There's all kinds of ways to implement a 'teaching-to-celebrate' philosophy like this, and I originally intended to write a few of them down, and then continue to write down answers for all of the other green prompts, and... generally... just, really type some stuff, you know?

Unfortunately, I can't do all that typing right now, because I've gotta get to work. I'll be back later.

For now, here's one thing that comes to mind:

"Why?"

Given that 'The Process of The Oscars' is completely fucking opaque to most people, I find the additional complete lack-of-"why" particularly bizarre. During the proceedings, there's nothing said about 'why [this] movie is the winner,' either in terms of procedure or merit: people generally don't know how the selections are made, and nobody ever knows why a winner is the winner.

...and yet, all things considered, nobody is wondering whether that's a pretty weird ask, for the modern generation. (Of audiences, media environments, attention-spendings, etc.)

Forget the part where you're trying to figure out how we even could arrive at a 'consensus answer' to the 'why' question — this is not difficult; the answer is 'change everything' — and instead, focus on what would slowly become different about The Oscars... and 'the movies,' and 'the audiences,' and 'the industry,' and 'The Oscars'... if a primary aspect of The Oscars became 'learning to understand what it is about Oscar-winning movies that makes them Oscar-winning movies,' year after year, in a fun way.

Learning how to think about movies — and why.

(Sidebar: Ask someone on the street 'what makes a haiku a haiku?,' and then ask them 'what makes an Oscar-winning-movie an Oscar-winning-movie?' They know that poems 'are important,' and they know that Oscar-winning movies 'are important,' but they don't particularly get either one of them, and their primary evaluation of the subject is merely that it 'feels' 'important' — and yet, they know something about why a haiku is a haiku: the 5-7-5 grammar. These people are already enjoying 'songs' — that is: <things-like-poems>, which follow grammars they already ('inherently') understand — and knowing 'the particular rules of haiku' doesn't seem to be destroying their ability to enjoy songs as an evaluatively-distinct expressive art form. Here's the question: Does [knowing-haiku-grammar] limit the scope of what they're already enjoying, or does it equip them to enjoy something new that they didn't previously understand at all? Movies are songs; Oscar-winning movies are haikus. Teaching people 'how to evaluate' [this-kind-of-thing] isn't going to prevent them from enjoying [that-kind-of-thing] — people who like haikus still like songs — and yet, it solves the problem of "nobody watches The Oscars because nobody in the audience cares about 'Oscar-type' movies," by addressing the fundamental problem of The Oscars: Why would they care about 'The Reader?' Why does the Academy care about 'The Reader?' Why?)

Imagine what would be different if The Oscars had to justify themselves — in gold ink. If they had to write down (and account for) the decisions being handed down by the group, every year — before god and history — such that, as a matter of course, the group's behavior includes total awareness of the most-likely 'reasoning' that history will assign to their vote. Over time, this built-in 'write-down-why' mechanism would foment consistency (that is: 'consensus of grammar'; descriptively, evolvingly), and through the [better-late-than-never] introduction of year-over-year consistency — even evolving consistency — the 'legitimate' wins would slowly accumulate actual cultural accountability and weight, and the bullshitty/'corrupt' wins [for lack of a better word] would slowly accumulate a degree of objective falsifiability.

Why? Because now we know what The Academy has said about why other movies deserved Oscars.

Under this arrangement, if — for example; god forbid — the Academy's actual <reasoning-for-why-they-chose-[this]-movie> is out of line with <the-[consensus]-reasoning-for-why-movies-should-be-chosen>, they're forced to lie about their actual reasoning and invent 'winning' arguments for that movie under the consensus rubric — arguments anybody can check; arguments which will become increasingly preposterous in an environment wherein the audience is becoming increasingly educated (and sophisticated) about <the-reasons-why-movies-should-or-should-not-get-Oscars>.

The system we have now is — essentially — a 'Supreme Court' metaphor, without any of the usual ability for the outside world to learn the opinions or arguments of the court. Combine this observation with the fact that what-they're-'ruling-on' is — essentially — haiku; a form of expression that's adjacent-to-but-not-representative-of something that the general audience actually... you know. Likes.

The Academy is the Supreme Court, handing-down totally-opaque, culturally-binding 'rulings' on... haiku. The Oscars are a congratulation; they should be a celebration. The night shouldn't be 'for' the winners, at all — ultimately, it should be 'for' the audience. (Or you can stop fucking televising it and just give up.) This changeover can manifest itself in a fuckjillion different ways, but they all start with the same general assumption: that The Oscars should be trying, in earnest, to keep their own cultural legacy alive and vital for each new generation; that they are not; and that this is finally becoming a real problem.

How might I approach a solution to it?

This was fun. Interesting dude. (The scientist, not the reporter.) (No offense, reporter.)