WHO’S
AFRAID OF A HOMOSEXUAL WOMAN?
Carol’s
exclusion from this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominations is a reminder of a
continuing Academy discomfort with LGBT-themed films
By
Anna MM Vetticad
The Academy Awards are upon
us, and not surprisingly, the #OscarsSoWhite campaign has risen to a crescendo.
The blistering condemnation this year of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences voters’ apparent racial bias though, threatens to overshadow criticism
of another of their persistent prejudices evident in the nominations:
homophobia.
Director Todd Haynes’ Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and
Rooney Mara as women who fall in love with each other in 1950s New York, has
received nods in six categories: Best Actress (Blanchett), Supporting Actress
(Mara), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Score and Costume Design.
It has not, however, been nominated for Best Director or the all-important Best
Picture Oscar.
Now, it could well be argued
that perhaps Academy voters genuinely did not consider Carol worthy. After all, our response to films is subjective and I
may love a film (I did love Carol)
that you may not like at all, without either of us being right or wrong. That
being said, it is equally valid to ask these voters how it is possible that a
film they deem well written, well acted, good looking and pleasing to the ear,
is not good enough? They did not even need to drop any of the pictures in the
present lot to acknowledge Carol.
Academy rules permit 10 nominees for the Best Picture race, yet they chose to
go with only eight picks this year.
Admittedly, it is possible
for a film to have all its elements in place and yet not quite add up. In any
cinematic venture, the director is the adder-uper (yes, grammar Nazis, I know
that is not a word), the person who provides the glue that binds it all
together, and it is no doubt possible that Academy voters genuinely believe
Haynes’ cinematic mathematics was not right.
Possible.
The greater likelihood
though, if we are honest about it, is that an Academy which is 94
per cent white, 76 per cent male and an average of 63 years old (source:
indiewire.com) was simply uncomfortable with Carol. I mean, c’mon! What did you expect in response to two
lesbian women who are not dead or broken at the end of the film, who shrug off
the men in their lives, yet are not callous, and who – spoiler alert –
prioritise happiness, peace of mind and being true to who they are above even
that perceived Holy Grail of womanhood: maternity?
Over the years, many films on LGBT (lesbian
gay bisexual transgender) themes and/or with primary or important supporting
LGBT characters have earned Oscar nominations. The tendency though has been to
award actors who performed these roles (Tom Hanks for Philadelphia in 1994, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote in 2006, Sean Penn for Milk in 2009, Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club in 2014) rather than
the production in its entirety. Beautiful as these films are, it is important
to point out that most possess features which might make them more acceptable
and reassuring to an ultra-conservative viewer: an all-pervading sense of
sadness and/or (supposed) degeneracy and in some cases, death for the LGBT
character.
The Academy’s extreme aversion to
homosexuality was never more evident than in 2006 when the eloquently
heart-rending Brokeback Mountain was
nominated for Best Picture but lost to the less deserving Crash. High-profile Academy member and veteran actor Tony Curtis
said with undisguised disdain at the time: “This
picture is not as important as we make it. It’s nothing unique. The only thing
unique about it is they put it on the screen. And they make ’em (male gay
lovers) cowboys… Howard Hughes and John Wayne wouldn’t like it.” Ernest
Borgnine was too disgusted to even watch Brokeback.
“I didn’t see it and I don’t care to see it,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I
know they say it’s a good picture, but I don’t care to see it. If John Wayne
were alive, he’d be rolling over in his grave!”
Five years on, the lines had edged forward
marginally when The Kids Are All Right
received four nominations including for Best Picture at the 83rd
Academy Awards in 2011. The film’s protagonists were not gay men, they were
lesbian women. Theirs was not a closeted relationship; they were married – to
each other. It was not a depressing story; it was a comedy drama. The Annette
Bening-Julianne Moore- starrer did not win in any category, but even its nominations
were a baby step ahead.
You might expect the hesitation over LGBT
themes to have diminished half a decade later, that too in the year after the
legalisation of same-sex marriages across all American states by the US Supreme
Court. It has not. Carol, as several
American commentators have pointed out, is perhaps just too female, too
positive and too life affirming for the notoriously conformist Academy to go
all the way with it.
The film’s central
characters, Carol Aird and Therese Belivet, could be disturbing to
traditionalists who continue to see LGBT persons as “the other”. They are not
filled with self-doubt, they are not ashamed about their sexual orientation
despite encountering social opprobrium and confusion, and their parting shot to
the viewer is optimistic.
Now if only they’d had the
courtesy to be miserable, they might have had a shot at a Best Picture
nomination. To be female and homosexual and sure of yourself, that too half a
century back – now that’s going a bit too far, no?
(Anna
MM Vetticad is the author of The
Adventures Of An Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)
(This column was
published in The Hindu Businessline on February 27, 2016)
Original link:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/whos-afraid-of-a-homosexual-woman/article8281138.ece
Previous instalment of Film Fatale: The Right To
Offend
Anna MM Vetticad’s Oscar Predictions for 2016
Photo caption: Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in a poster of
Carol
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