Staring at Her Cleavage

To be somewhere at a live event. And for free, too. I found such an irresistible offer — I’ve stayed up the whole night watching the Oscars ceremony live. This cultural highlight was provided free by a movie channel.

And this is what you missed during your guileless sleep: You missed a misunderstanding.

I thought that a signal from America, from Hollywood, from the Kodak Theater, would be passed, but no — I looked at a cardboard studio somewhere in Hilversum, where Bridget Maasland (a well-known Dutch presenter) welcomed me, dressed up in something that appeared to be a gala dress, with a split and bare neckline, made out of a gold-colored substance, but of the kind of gold that has become dull and far from polished.

There were three guests, dressed up, but more casually, sitting on small chairs opposite her: the filmmaker Martin Koolhoven, the film critic Dana Linssen and stylist Leco Zadelhoff — who was there to judge the gowns. Koolhoven is the creator of “Winter in Wartime,” the Dutch entry that just missed a nomination for the Oscars. And perhaps that set the tone, because after a few hours’ sleep I recall three guests mostly grumbling because this year’s Oscar ceremony was a little bit worthless. Feeble and bitchy were just some of the qualifications that were mentioned, and there I sat on the couch, with my free live broadcast.

Because of the many American commercials, I spent a quarter of the night in that studio in Hilversum, where it was drummed into my head how ‘tame’ it was, and so stiff and how the jokes of those two old presenters were not funny. The ballet was also dismissed, and the acceptance speeches, you know, those well-rehearsed spontaneous favors, were also not good — and all this, framed by the lethargic, “ever-interesting perennials” of the orchestra. At last, with hollow eyes, I could only stare at Bridget’s cleavage, but even that lost its power after 4 o’clock in the morning. I worked my way through categories such as best sound mix and editing, best short [film] animation, best score, best art direction and best costume [design], all on the way to the highlights of best actor, actress, director and film, which were reserved for the last hour, the same hour that daylight dawned and, oh no, it started snowing again.

Sure enough, the party in the studio jumped up. For the first time, a woman was awarded the biggest prize, because, according to Linssen, she directed a film “like a man”: She obviously suppressed her femininity.

Her name was Kathryn Bigelow. Not a man at all, but a brilliant woman who made a blood curdling war movie, but who, it was also specifically noted, was the ex-wife of James Cameron, the creator of “Avatar” and the expected winner of this evening. He had previously tried to strangle her. But I saw that much later, during the jet-lag.