The Priority of Good Values Is the Routine Custom of the Oscars

In the afternoon of Feb. 28 Beijing time, the 83rd Academy Awards (American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards) drew to a close in Los Angeles, America.

This year’s Academy Awards again continued the “dark horse to the end” tradition; after showing a part of its talent in preliminary awards, the 12-nomination-winning British film “The King’s Speech” won four awards in one fell swoop. The film is an “obsolete court inspiration film” that depicts how the British King George VI overcame his stammer and took over the crown. Speaking of “winning,” they’re not exaggerating. Of the “Big Four” — best picture, best director, best actor and best actress — “The King’s Speech” won three, plus one other award, “a big one among the small ones,” best original screenplay. The original number one hot candidate, David Finch’s “The Social Network,” only won three technical awards, and its thunder was even stolen by the controversial suspense film “Inception.”

This year may be the most idiosyncratic Academy Award compared to other award ceremonies in recent years: Not long ago, the British Oscars (British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards), Golden Globe Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Award and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards all gave best director to “The Social Network,” as well as three best picture awards. Only the British Oscars gave best picture to “The King’s Speech,” but some people theorized that this was a “human award for the sake of the British King.”

These seemingly unexpected and unusual results are actually Oscar’s routine custom — postwar preference to good values, especially in recent years, which is not hard to find if one analyzes it precisely.

These so-called values imply that the movie should be decent and positive, and consistent with America’s mainstream values of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, praise and criticism. Based on this values system, the movie also needs to fit the taste of the majority of contemporary people. For the best picture of 2008 award, people were optimistic about movies like “Changeling” and “The Dark Knight”; however, the final winner was “Slumdog Millionaire,” which was not the best either at the box office or in public praise. Last year’s big winner was “The Hurt Locker”; although it received many compliments, it couldn’t compete with either “Inglorious Basterds” or “Gran Torino” before the ceremony. But “Slumdog Millionaire’s” “American dream plus inspiration” theme — a “joke” frequently heard in American society used to frame this type of film — is worth watching a hundred times, especially against the backdrop of the financial crisis, making this kind of movie, once again, more “correct in values.” The “Hurt Locker” not only involved “absolute right values” about a military topic, but was also balanced with an element of reflection, which naturally was icing on the cake.

In this respect, “The King’s Speech” is not an exception: It is an inspirational story filled with the same old stuff under a new label. It is better to say that it’s an “American dream” story wearing a British gown than to call it a British court drama; an “ugly duck becomes a swan” fairy tale brushed with an exotic royal background, adding a well-intentioned comedic element. We can say that its winning is similar to the then “inexplicable success” of “Shakespeare in Love,” which means that an “exotic story with American values” made it again, creating an Oscars miracle of a winning small-production, plot-heavy film. Additionally, the success of “The King’s Speech” was attributed to its strong and solid actor-director team.

Compared to “The King’s Speech,” “The Social Network” is also a plot-heavy film, but the Internet element is too new (at least from the judges’ point of view). This movie was presented as a documentary drama, which narrates the story of the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. Of course, the film is not just a documentary movie, it’s also about love, friendship and money. Although some people thought it was marvelous that the director had successfully packaged a new Internet story into a mainstream values film, in the same battle of values, the more “natural” story was obviously favored more by traditionalists.

In fact, the Academy Awards do not always give awards based on rules and regulations. When blockbusters flood the market, small-production films are the most unexpected winners; and when small-production and academic films are everywhere, commercial blockbusters are suddenly upheld. It’s difficult to cater to all tastes, and it is reasonable that new tastes appear over time. The two big winners before this year were either small-production or “high-cost small films,” with the normal commercial blockbusters having not been heard from in a long time. This year we had a shocking blockbuster upset the scheme, which may have made the results totally different from the last two years’. Unfortunately, in today’s economic recession, every movie company is calculating carefully and budgeting strictly. A few blockbusters were either mounted on dead-horse sequels or traditional non-mainstream films like “Inception.” It’s no wonder why “values first” “The King’s Speech” came from behind to win four major awards.

The author is a scholar traveling in Canada.