No Middle East controversy at Hollywood Oscars this year, but third world resentment grows
It was kind of a relief not to have a big controversy at the Oscars this year over some Middle East battle. There have been a few int he past, some high profile, many just lingering behind-the-scenes.
But then as I scanned Google News for anything related to a Middle East Oscar's Conflict, I found a lot of resentment against the Oscars, mainly from foreign based writers, like this one, written by Bikas Mishra, who asks at NDTVMovies.com, "Are Foreign Film Oscars Really Global?"
The point that Bikas makes, that I have also read in columns by writers in other Third World countries, is why are the Oscars considered to be the "World's Best" when the judging has little to do with a judging system that is representative of the world? It's kind of like the same question I hear more and more from Arab World friends who ask, "How can the World Series be a World Series when it has nothing to do with the World at all?"
Well, the World Series has nothing to do with a world basbeall competition or the world's best. It's all marketing and spin. A lot of public relations and perception. It also involves buy-in from viewers. Bikas, above, for example, buys into the spin that the Oscars or the Academy Awards somehow represents the world's movie industry. That comes from the fact that over the 80 years of the Oscars, Hollywood dominated the movie industry not just in the U.S. but throughout the world. I mean, what stopped other countries from producing movies?
The Oscar's only represents a world competition in that people outside of the United States believe that.
"Bollywood" rejects the notion and many Indian writers slam the Oscars as being unfair to their country's growing influence in producing films. Still, doesn't it all have to do with public demand? Bollywood may be a big deal to Indians, but it still doesn't do much for non-Indians. Although when I was young, my mother (Palestinian born in Bethlehem) would turn on the local cable TV station to catch the Indian American community's broadcasts of Indiana-made movies because their singing came the closest to Arabian melodies. It made her feel at home, when there were no Arab films avaulable to Arabs living in America.
I did check the Academy Awards web site to see if they bill themselves as the representatives of the best in the world. Besides having a hard-to-navigate web site (lots of pictures, very little content substance), the web site of the Academy Awards Arts & Sciences doesn't claim to be the official world contest for best films. It's just the Oscars.
So maybe Bikas and others are lamenting the fact that we -- the Third World -- have just accepted the notion that they represent the world because the world doesn't offer an alternative.
It's a similar complaint against the news media. The news media is biased. But, the news media doesn't claim to be the representative of the world's media. It is assumed by those in the Tird World who wonder why all the media coverage is about the West and the United States, and often filled with anti-Third World images and perceptions (such as anti-Islamic themes, etc).
Whose fault is it? Well, why blame the Oscars? They're just pounding their own chest. If Saudi Arabia wanted to challenge Hollywood's misrepresentation of the Arabs and Muslims, for example, shouldn't the burden be on them to produce films? Why don't they? They certainly have enough money to do that if they wanted too.
I think part of it is that we, those of us who feel pushed out of the "mainstream" everything (movies, film, media ...) like to point a finger and blame others for our own failure to act.
If the news media is anti-Arab or anti-Islamic, for exampel, is it the media's fault or is it also the fault of Arabs and Muslims for not creating and buying-in and empowering their own media? The reality is most Arab Americans, for example, don't even subscribe to their own Arab American ehtnic media, yet they subscribe without thinking to the "biased" mainstream news media.
Whose fault is that?
Sometimes, we have to accept part of the blame. If Hollywood films don't reflect the world, maybe the World should do more to produce films and stop whining.
Ray Hanania
www.hanania.com