"Crash"-ing the Party

I'll admit to still being a little surprised when Crash was announced as Best Picture a couple of weeks ago. But the ensuing outrage was even more astonishing.

It was admittedly pretty cheap on the Academy's part to not only dedicate an enormous amount of time to the usual self-congratulatory montages, but to pass their annual ceremony off as selecting films that pave the progressive path for society. The entire evening could have been called a night to honor Brokeback if there wasn't that little unusual twist at the end. Not having seen the other nominees, I'm not going to scream about robbery here, but the reaction following Oscar night has been pretty fascinating.

Kenneth Turan wrote one of the earliest (and, perhaps, harshest) criticisms of the Academy, and fans of the Ang Lee film even advertised their second opinion in Variety. Ebert and Roeper—who both picked Crash to win—came to the Paul Haggis film's defense; Ebert attacking Turan and Roeper attacking just about everybody else.

And then, of course, there was the reaction of Brokeback author Annie Proulx—my favorite part of her nearly 1,100-word rant being the "conservative heffalump academy voters" comment.

What's truly astonishing, though, is that these kinds of decisions at the Oscars are absolutely nothing new. For one reason or another—but mostly, I suspect, because Brokeback is dealing with homosexuality—some people are more outraged than I (or Roeper, apparently) can recall. Wasn't this the same Academy whose conservative tastes favored, say, Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction? The English Patient over Fargo?

My recollection of the telecast will be this: Jon Stewart was good enough, the food and wine were teriffic, and there were too many goddamn montages. There's always next year, I suppose.