And the nominees are\u2026 The Economy, Homosexuality, Racism, Politics, Religion. And the winner is\u2026<\/p>\n
Religion!<\/p>\n
Hugh Jackman discussed the economy first by putting on the seemingly low budget intro, which was much funnier than I thought it would be. And of course Slumdog Millionaire cleaned up a lot of Oscars including Best Picture. Clearly the economy was not a taboo subject for the people wearing million dollar outfits and accessories.<\/p>\n
Of course with a film like Milk nominated for many awards and Sean Penn the obvious winner for Best Actor, the Academy Awards had no problem fighting back against the Prop 8 crowd. I was very happy to see this and actually thought that Milk was going to beat the odds and win Best Picture. Even though it didn\u2019t, Penn gave a great acceptance speech, which made this a topic that Hollywood was definitely not afraid to tackle.<\/p>\n
Cuba Gooding Jr. broke the racial tension by discussing Robert Downey Jr.\u2019s role as an Australian actor playing a black character in Tropic Thunder. Hugh Jackman also commented on the range of Downey\u2019s acting. Even the blackface joke got big laughs.<\/p>\n
Frost\/Nixon was nominated for quite a few awards, was talked about quite a bit throughout the night, and even though it didn\u2019t win any of those awards, Oscar was still a very political night in large part to this film. While Sean Penn kept the political talk to a minimum, he still talked about equal rights and how ashamed Republicans will be when they realize that they were on the wrong side of history on the gay rights issue (among other issues of course). Hollywood is always happy to support liberals. I don\u2019t mind that because I am a liberal. So politics is rarely ever a taboo subject at the Academy Awards.<\/p>\n
Religion on the other hand\u2026 well, let\u2019s just say that it wasn\u2019t very smart of the Academy to let Bill Maher present the Oscar for Best Documentary when his own documentary was snubbed in this very category. Bill Maher did a fantastic job calling the Academy out on this. I don\u2019t think he did it for personal reasons, but because he knows that the topic of his documentary was too taboo for the Academy to touch. Maher actually bitch-slapped religion right there on stage and it was fantastic.<\/p>\n
But I wish that I could blame the Academy for not having the courage to nominate Religulous for Best Documentary. The fact is that we are really to blame here. This topic is controversial and we have not done our jobs in making it a less taboo subject. The more religion is called out for being the variety of ridiculous myths that religion is, the less taboo this subject will become. Many of the award winners still thank God for winning while the losers don\u2019t blame God for losing. Even the screenwriter for Milk who spoke up against the churches who pushed for Prop 8 made a point to let gay people know that God loves them. Not according to the Bible and the Koran his doesn\u2019t, but that isn\u2019t the point. When someone thanks God for winning an award, we should all laugh at him or her because it is ridiculous to believe that the Creator of the Universe had anything to do with the award. We have to be more outspoken in our criticism of religion and treat ridiculous myths as ridiculous. A good example of this was when Tina Fey and Steve Martin made a mockery of Scientology during their presentation. Why was that acceptable and Bill Maher\u2019s documentary not acceptable?<\/p>\n
On a final note concerning the Academy Awards this year, I was a little annoyed that during the part of the show where the Academy remembered those in the business who have died during 2008, they left off the very obvious Health Ledger (January 22, 2008) and the less mainstream actress, Majel Barret-Roddenberry (December 18, 2008). Shame on Oscar for that!<\/p>\n