As the film awards approach, our fatal attraction to Brad Pitt et al grows, just as interest in their films diminishes
It is film award season, where the role of the viewer is to be amazed or repelled, depending on one's ability to see pathology everywhere. My own Oscar grief this year is all about George Clooney and Brad Pitt. These two, who can't stretch to a metaphor, are fighting for best actor when neither can do much but pull a face to match an idea. But 2012 is not the saddest Oscar year. That will always be 1950, when Gloria Swanson lost for Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis for All About Eve. Perhaps these movies, which were essentially about mad actresses digested by their own PR, were too truthful for Hollywood. The town didn't like the mirror and the Oscar went to Judy Holliday instead, in Born Yesterday.
If we must have awards, surely the best chameleon should win? But the Oscars are a marketing device, swelled by the truism that the more worthless the product, the more grandiose the chatter, and every year sentiment dictates the outcome, and is dressed with significance. In an industry of narcissists the film PR is an apex predator of bullshit. "I have the whole of the world's press on the other line," one once told me, "Why do I need you?" It's a good point, but only a film PR would say it. Only a film PR would expect gratitude for offering 10 minutes with Denzel Washington, barely enough time to throw yourself on your knees. Then comes the order: "Only ask Denzel about the film." No one cares "only" about the film. No one.
Movies have become the least interesting thing about cinema, unless you want to watch actors pretending to be bats, or spiders, or, to quote the trailer from The Avengers, "a playboy billionaire philanthropist" with rockets attached to his bum. (That would be Iron Man speaking. He is part weapon, part Robert Downey Jr). All big movies are B movies now, which makes acting a very silly profession, and this fact has another ghastly outcome – the morbid depression of the critic. When a mainstream "art" film like Shame escapes, the critics clap from pure starvation, just because the protagonist is not half bat, or half weapon, or half fork. Shame was about a man masturbating while listening to Bach, and it was very silly. Even sex addiction is not that joyless. But the critics recognised something in the protagonist's despair and loved it. Not that Shame will win an Oscar. Michael Fassbender has too much penis.
So, in this wilderness of bats and Bach, the true meaning of movies is found in watching actors interacting with the rest. Elizabeth Hurley had an insight when she called non-actors "civilians", because the relationship of movie star to viewer is, as with all obsessions, more to do with hate than love. It is a war, full of pens and explosions and high walls and helicopters. We made our movie stars gods and they must be punished; it is clear from Sunset Boulevard that the great lights are the sun, and beware the mortal who flies too close. And so it is now – their imperfections are pictured in Heat, the modern equivalent of having your liver devoured. Our malice is explicit. Is it coincidence that the best fun to be had at the movies these days is to see actors burnt, blown up, frozen, hurled off comets, devoured by aliens, or wolves? Or, in real-ish life, made to shrink and bulge, with new teeth, new hair, new skin? Even Rachel Weisz was too ugly for L'Oréal, so they airbrushed her, were slated, and withdrew this new Rachel with the plastic skin this week.
The actors respond by sitting, passive and hateful, through the interviews their contracts demand, saying nothing, all auto-Cordelias. At the Old Vic, Kevin Spacey will only sign autographs through a slot in the door, which is appalling – until you meet the fans who look, to me, not admiring but covetous, squirming to be in the last scene in Perfume, when the man who brought such joy is eaten. No wonder they like playing superheroes. They need the powers.
I want to complicate the cause, and turn it Freudian, and suggest that J-Lo is your mother and Val Kilmer is your father. But I suspect that it is simply that they look so big, and big things ask to be stared at by simple creatures. In any case, the cult of the movie star is self-hating, more horror than rom-com. There will be no Hollywood Ending, again.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/02/oscars-season-self-hatred
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