And the Oscar goes to...

I made it my mission to see all movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar this year. With ten movies nominated, an opportunity presented itself to look at these movies and wonder: what do these movies say about 2010? What themes emerge? Why these movies, why now? So as best as I could, I tried to extrapolate a little social theories from a whole lot of movie watching.

The Other

I rank the movies in this category on a spectrum. On the most responsible end is District-9, a sci-fi movie in which aliens come to earth only to be subjugated and marginalized by humans. It’s a movie dealing with The Other, and what happens when someone of the majority morphs into The Other and can finally see the ramifications of their old behavior. Sci-fi usually isn’t my genre, but I really liked the story and execution.

In the middle of this spectrum is Avatar. Although an infinite amount of critical theories could apply and contradict each other, the most striking to me is an anti-imperialist one. But, like Huck Finn, the end wimps out: the Na-vi need the wisdom and leadership of a human to survive (whereas in District-9, the human needs the knowledge of the aliens to survive in their world). Although the story broke no new ground, Avatar did deserve every bit of praise for its visuals. For once, 3-D didn’t distract eyeballs but immersed them in a new world.

The most egregious movie here was The Blind Side. Sitting through this movie was like awkwardly sitting through a conversation with elderly people who don’t realize their own racism. The movie makes caricatures out of its black characters: either scary and violent or passive and in need of white assistance. The mother in the film repeatedly refers to the 18-year-old black man as “boy” in her Southern drawl. Anyone else uncomfy? The main character is a large, quiet man (who fails abysmally all aptitude tests but the one for “protectiveness”) who does a book report on Of Mice and Men… anyone else uncomfy now?

Get Thee to a University

My favorite films of the year: An Education and Precious. Both feature young women with two different problems: one is stifled by a strict family and private school and the other suffers from a horribly abusive family and uncaring society. Although the problems of the former seem like luxuries compared to the problems of the latter, both are young women unable to hear their own voices, much less use them. In the end, their minds, their determination, their educations, and their English teachers save them. Swoon!

All You Need is Love

Up. How I adore Up. It’s a movie about contented solitude. Then love. Then loss. Then learning how to take that love and apply it in ways that you didn’t quite count on. Up in the Air has a similar plot arc and character progression. The movie is my long-awaited grown-up adaptation of The Velveteen Rabbit (a book which even appears in the film). While some viewed the movie as horribly depressing, I saw it as uplifting: even when love doesn’t last, it still transforms.

The opposite example is The Hurt Locker in which a character’s main love is to an incredibly dangerous job in a war zone, and his only emotional attachments occur in that environment. Back home, the adoration of a partner and child cannot pierce him. Does this mean the true love of his life is his work? Or that his war experiences have emotionally damaged him so that he’s unable to accept or give love outside of that context? It was a new look at a war movie, it kept me staring at the screen without blinking. Well deserving of the big prize.

A Dish Best Served Cold

And in the end, two very different movies about coping with being wronged. Inglourious Basterds focused on revenge plots against the Nazis. I could not find the movie as satisfying as Tarantino seemed to mean it to be. Mass murder is meant as a tonic for vengeance, but it results in moral chaos that kept my heartbeat rising but created an emotional rift between myself and the film by the end. The first scene, however, was reason enough for the best picture nod. Whoa-my-goodness. I'd like to see more of this kind of Tarantino.

A Serious Man. This deserved Best Original Screenplay. While it’s a quiet movie of soft conversations and uncomfortable silences, it’s troubled me since watching it. A man reacts to sudden bad news not with vengeance toward the ones who wronged him but with intense introverted reflection. In the end, his questions bear no meaning against the bigger question: How much of our lives do we make happen, and how much happens to us?

Jeepers, Creepers

Each artist has a preferred medium. Adams had his black-and-white film, Degas his pastels, Poe his creepiness. As for me, I create in Peep.

Three years ago the Washington Post launched the Peeps Show contest, challenging readers to create a diorama of a famous scene using marshmallow Peeps for characters. Each year since has gotten increasingly out of hand: last year they had over 1,100 entries, many by professional artists and designers who were not messing around. There have been Hopper and Escher paintings reimagined with Peeps, a marshmallow Marion Barry (memorably rendered in “Peep Set Me Up”), and even a Peep Captain Sully bravely standing on a plane wing in the Hudson. Who would’ve known that a marshmallow with dots for eyes could capture such broad range of emotion?

This year, I threw my Peep into the ring. Seeking to start early, I began to lurk in candy aisles in early February to no avail. While one can buy a singing Santa doll in September, it is impossible to peek a Peep before Valentine’s. I got a reputation at Rite-Aid for my stubborn return visits – the manager saw me one day and asked, “Hey, aren’t you that lady who’s looking for Peeps? The rabbit kind?” He laughed and asked why I demanded Peeps, and I only shook my head and said that the real answer was stranger than anything he could guess. But on that glorious evening of February 15 when heart-shaped boxes of candy made room for cartons of Peeps, the work began.

During the following two weeks, the dining room table was covered in fabric, cardboard, glue, and Peeps. I spent a good deal of time pondering questions like: If Peeps had arms, how long would they be? Are googly eyes appropriate here? What about wigs? As a kind of casting call, I sat before a row of marshmallow rabbits to evaluate their facial expressions and shape (they’re all different, really). Unable to resist a creative challenge, Jimmy joined me. We had lighting strategy sessions: overhead, back, spot, and combinations of the three. He tinkered with shutter speeds, focus, and had the artistic revelation to incorporate chicks amid the rabbits in order to create an oppositional us-versus-them conflict in our scene. It became an obsession. One day when my mom called and asked what I was doing, I replied that I was trying to sew a dress for a Peep but was having a hard time given that Peeps lack waistlines and shoulders. (She was proud, I’m sure.) And I’m ashamed to say that I skipped a Gloria Steinem lecture in order to make finishing touches on the diorama to get it to the Post on time. I’m sure Mama Steinem would understand; I was a woman on a mission.

With any luck, this diorama will be posted as a finalist on the Post website on Easter. But for a sneak preview for my loyal readers (both of you), I present: “Nobunny Puts Peepy in the Corner,” a marshmallow tribute to Patrick Swayze.