The Oscars and the Self-Pity

Last year was a great year for movies, one of the best in a long time, and last night’s Oscars reflected that. It was an entertaining mix of celebrity self-absorption, genuinely moving moments from artists who have toiled for decades in obscurity, good comedy bits, terrible comedy bits, political posturing in a time of global conflict, head-slapping senility, a show-stopping performance by Ryan Gosling, and a song actually called “The Fire Inside From the Movie ‘Flamin’ Hot.” The Oscars didn’t even run that long, the usual complaint. I spend most of my life these days going to and writing about movies, so this should have been my Super Bowl. So why, then, do I feel like shit today?

Maybe the difference between people who cover the entertainment industry and people who cover the Super Bowl is that the people who cover the Super Bowl either already have played in the Super Bowl or never had any hope of playing in the Super Bowl. But many people who write about or comment on the Oscars once had dreams of winning an Oscar, or something like one. And so when the Oscars happen, on the one hand, I say, “that’s good, I liked that movie, good for them.” On the other hand, I find myself saying “why not me?”

This free-floating envy is, on the one hand, completely irrational. I am not Christopher Nolan and I never had a chance of becoming Christopher Nolan. But take, for instance, one Cord Jefferson, winner of the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction. On the one hand, good for him. On the other hand, Cord Jefferson was, in recent memory, an editor and writer for Gawker.com, a website that took it upon itself as a major mission some 20 years ago to destroy my life and career and succeeded to the extent that I still remember their efforts and will be bitter about them until my final days on Earth. Cord Jefferson himself had nothing to do with those efforts, but still, he has an Oscar and almost no one else on Earth has an Oscar. I also have tried to pitch TV shows and have failed miserably. But he is an Oscar winner, and the only thing I’ve won this year is fourth place in the “Sunday Mystery Bounty” at the Lodge Card Club in Round Rock, Texas. His inbox is full this morning, and I’m getting spam emails from iherb.com.

The morning after this Oscars, I felt like I always do after the Oscars: Like a brain-dead loser who will never accomplish anything. Even though I know that I’m not brain-dead, I’m not a loser, and I have accomplished some things, I’m definitely not one of last night’s big winners. I watched the show on my modest couch in my modest Texas home, next to my wife and my dogs, while eating ice cream stuffed between two cookies. It was fine and pleasant, but it wasn’t being there. It wasn’t being anywhere.

I turn as solace, like I do pretty much every year, to a 1989 Stanley Elkin essay from Harper’s, “At The Academy Awards,” which references a very different time and place in Hollywood history, but has the same who the hell are these people vibe that I always feel as I watch the Oscars from afar:

“At the Academy Awards, it’s a pointless, incomplete vaudeville. Bob Hope and Lucille Ball present 19 ‘Oscar Winners of Tomorrow’ in an endless every-man-for-himself song and dance about ambition and narcissism philosophically distilled from A Chorus Line without the benefit of that show’s melody, passion, talent, or wit … it’s a drawn-out, almost fastidious, customary kowtow. It’s the obligatory standing ovation. You could put money down on who’s going to get one…

And these anger me too–Bob Hope’s banter, these “jokes”. From my resentment pool, deep as some sea trench, rises a personal bile…It’s stupidity that has me down, Hope’s simplistic, condescending view of history and of ourselves, me. Because I take it personally, the good-natured contempt, the artificial scorn, the false assumption like a wink up in your face like a slap, or the car salesman’s nudge like an elbow to your rib that we’re all pals here, that we’re in it together. Well–we ain’t.”

And ain’t that the truth. This is the only place you’ll see Stanley Elkin’s name today, but you can find 1000 memes of Messi the Wonder Dog without even trying. The Oscars make it very clear who the real winners and losers of life are. Brothers and sisters, you’re not the winners.

Messi doesn't need an award to know he's the Best Boy. #Oscars2024 pic.twitter.com/f2WV17LRTp

— NEON (@neonrated) March 11, 2024

And yet here I am, still going to the movies, staring up at the screen in wonder, dreaming my dreams for another year. Tonight, I’m going to yet another screening, and will feel simultaneously happy and fulfilled, and also very bad about myself. The cycle begins anew.