www.thefilmexperience.com에 새로 올라온 글입니다.
97년 헬렌 헌트의 수상을 시작으로 99년 힐러리 스웽크, 2000년 줄리아 로버츠,
2002년 니콜 키드먼, 2003년의 샬리즈 테론까지 수상자들의 공통점과 수상 이유,
더 강력했고 충분히 수상 가능했던 다른 후보자들까지도 언급이 된 흥미로운 리포트네요.
글쓴이는 올해도 마찬가지 'formula'에 의해 힐러리 스웽크가 수상할 가능성에 대해
매우 불만이 많은 듯 합니다.
좀 길긴 하지만 매우 재미있는 글이어서 퍼옵니다.

The Gold, The Poor and The Ugly
Or: Does AMPAS have issues with women?


"She was trash. And she knew it" That line is spoken early on in Million Dollar Baby when describing Maggie Fitzgerald, the down-on-her-luck female boxer played by Hilary Swank. But it could just as easily be used to describe many "Best Actress" roles which have found favor with the Academy. Moviegoers around the world are familiar with the jokey formulas to win an Oscar. Many are the snide comments that revolve around actors who take on roles involving weight gain, accents, playing against type, death scenes, and disabilities of any sort. Lately observant eyes have noted a tendency on the part of the AMPAS voters to give the Actress statue to whoever de-glams for a role; no makeup or unflatteringly severe makeup (Sarandon in Dead Man Walking / Holly Hunter The Piano), or tons of makeup magic to make you less attractive (Theron in Monster / Kidman in The Hours). Yet, what has not been widely commented on is the Academy voters fondness for "poor white trash" or in more subtle cases, plain old poverty / hard times. Time and again --in the Best Actress category at least, the statue will go to the actress who plays the most poverty stricken character. The 'de-glamming' trend, than, is possibly a result of this rather than perhaps the main attention-grabber for the statue.

I first began to fret about this nearly foolproof formula for winning the Best Actress statue in late December 2004 when Hilary Swank emerged from the Hollywood smog (and an unimpressive career) six years after her Oscar win for Boys Don't Cry to suddenly become the frontrunner again. In classic Oscar deja-vu she again plays the most poverty stricken character, and again plays a manly woman who meets a tragic fate. Again she leads the race. Various awards groups have marched neatly, subserviently in lockstep to honor her as if it never occurred to them to choose any other candidate. This despite the overall richness of the nominee pool and despite Swank playing the least multi-dimensional of the five roles. But never mind about Imelda Staunton's London busybody in Vera Drake. Forget Annette Bening's temperamental diva in Being Julia. Ignore Kate Winslet's umpteenth case for herself as the great actress of her generation. Hilary Swank presents to you the formula! And the formula, predictably, declares the winner every time.

  
This formula, we'll call it "Hard Times / Hard Looks", calls for the uglification of gorgeous Hollywood creatures---or, more accurately, a downplaying of beauty for the very beautiful. Grace Kelly perfected it way back in 1954 in The Country Girl and managed to steal the Oscar from Judy Garland's magnificent A Star is Born performance ...perhaps the first of many injustices committed under the "Hard Times / Hard Looks" movement. But I know you're asking: If this is so foolproof than why hasn't anyone been talking about the Academy's love of poverty? Well, first of all, nobody likes to think about disturbing psychological trends in voting habits or how they reflect gender biases (the men do not have a similar "get poor and disheveled" formula). And secondly, this formula has been around for ever without much hoopla...it's just never been so successful for so many years running before. But I'm calling the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on it right now: You have issues with the female sex. You need therapy! Why do you need your women roughed up a bit? Why do you need them struggling to make ends meet? Why do you need the world's great beauties to pretend ugliness? Please notice: No ugly women are ever hired for these plain-jane roles.

But perhaps you think I exaggerate? I wish that I did. In the Academy's defense I struggled to find a uniting trend in the male counterpart category in the past 10 years. I had hoped that "Hard Times/Hard Looks" was merely something they loved and not something that they loved about women. But alas, no unifying trend emerged for the men. Some characters were not wanting for money. Some poor. Some heroic. Some villainous. Some were uglied up. Some were celebrated for their rugged handsomeness. But there wasn't much by way of commonalities. And the nail in the Academy's coffin? There were certainly no unbroken eight-year trends indicating that they needed their men to be any one specific thing in order to be worthy of the highest industry honor. It is only the women who have to strictly conform to meet with their approval.

If it had been just a year or two of these types of characters winning I wouldn't have thought twice about this. But you have to go back eight years to the prize handed out in March 1997 as Frances McDormand strutted her formidable stuff across the stage to pick up the trophy for her amazing singular work in Fargo, to find the trend defeated.

Let's look at the evidence:


In 1997, against a rich field that included Judi Dench's royal majesty Mrs. Brown, and Helena Bonham Carter's upper class love-lost bitch in Wings of the Dove, Helen Hunt took the Oscar for playing the poorest character. Though her character hardly reads as "poor white trash" the other nominees played wealthy characters (don't believe me? look it up) and Hunt's "Carol" was a single mother who couldn't make heads or tails of the HMO system and couldn't afford the health problems of her young son. Now, the movie wasn't really about that. But it was there. I used to blame Hunt's win, like everyone else did, on Hunt's American citizenship since the other nominees were all Brits. But now, in retrospect, after counting up those numerous welfare checks in the Best Actress category, I blame it on her financial status. Most of the other nominees were at their most beautiful as well -Hunt went for believably plain if still TV star level pretty.

The next year Gwyneth Paltrow won (rather famously) for Shakespeare in Love and accepting her Oscar she looked like a princess in pink. But in the movie no royal riches are hers. Cate Blanchett, rolling in royal dough as Queen Elizabeth. She could hardly be called "poor". Many called the performance the years's best. She still lost. Neither were the other competing roles wanting for legal tender (aside from the foreign language performance and those don't play by the standard rules) And while the movie made no disguise of her beauty, Paltrow did dress up as a man -- which was her tiny cop therein towards "de-glamming."

In 1999, the trend began to take more obvious form. Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry essayed a poor white trash transsexual. Among the other nominees are a complex double-sided portrait of a glamorous well-off woman in wartime England, a bitchy realtor and middle class wife, and a schoolteacher. None of the characters were as down on their luck as Swank's Brandon Teena. Certainly none of them were even close to homelessness as this Nebraskan transsexual was.

  
The following year Julia Roberts, in poor white trash beauty-chic (all push up bras and big hair) wins for Erin Brockovich. In one scene...in the only scene in which I had trouble buying the characterization she sees a cockroach in her kitchen sink and screams "Who Lives Like This!?!" Surely Ms. Roberts has only experienced this sort of life in her nightmares. While her character is heroic, she's still poor white trash. The other nominees are a political candidate, a pastry chef, a single mother and beloved sister (not poor). Who was Julia's chief competition? Why the other poverty stricken character! An elderly addict Sara Goldfarb played by Ellen Burstyn.

The next year Halle Berry creates history as the first African American woman to win thee Best Actress prize (for Monster's Ball) So, it's not technically poor white trash. But that's splitting hairs --she fits the profile too. Like Roberts she's still beautiful (the beauty is hard to hide) but her looks are not played "up" but down. Her competitors? A glamorous tragic/comic courtesan, a vengeful upper middle class mother, a famous writer, and a bumbling British reporter.

In 2002, the chain is finally broken. But only sort of. Nicole Kidman is not poor in the Hours but she does work the un-beauty angle by way of latex cosmetics--queue that infamous nose! Julianne Moore plays a lonely wife in a performance that no single other actor on the planet could have done as well and still loses. Zellweger is a locked up would-be vaudevillian with financial offers thrown at her left and right. Hayek is a famous painter. None of the characters live in squalor so the "Hard Times/ Hard Looks" award goes to the performer with the hardest looks.

Last year, the trend reached what I thought would be its apotheosis: Charlize Theron played poor murderous white trash Aileen Wuornos and won the Oscar for Monster. She's unrecognizably ugly courtesy of great and ridiculously non-nominated makeup work (I guess that was the power of Charlize Theron's acting that the molecules on her face rearranged themselves into ugliness and the likeness of Aileen). Theron's homeless, monstrous role beat a diverse lot of nominees but none of them had characters as hard up. Her chief competition was even fabulously wealthy (Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give) so I guess it was really no contest at all.

  
And this year, despite what looked like an untoppable trend-personification in Charlize Theron last year, Hilary Swank delivers not just the poverty stricken "Hard Times/ Hard Looks" angle but she throws in all the other Oscar gimmicks to boot; the ones people know and laugh about but still fall for: Death (by euthanasia), Disability (quadriplegic!), Accents (southern), Weight gain (all muscle). She's the Oscar formula anthropomorphized.

There is obviously some greater force at work here. In all cases in the past eight years the actress that wins is a less attractive version of her movie-star self and (with the exception of Kidman) is also poverty stricken --or at least the poorest of the nominated roles. What conclusions can we or should we draw from this? The Supporting Actress category has often had a Madonna/Whore problem going on with hookers and longsuffering wives/mothers battling it out as preferred roles. Perhaps Best Actress is like that too? A therapy session for the industry. Maybe the Academy needs to see the woman ugly in order to respect her. And Oscar can still desire her after seeing her roughed up because he knows it's all an illusion: the very wealthy as common folk, the very beautiful as plain or ugly. The Oscar for Best Actress is, perhaps, not a prize for acting at all. It's a thinly veiled drama about Hollywood's greatest fears; to be poor and ugly. For a town that runs on sex appeal and money, what could be worse? By handing the prize to the woman most willing to work through their issues for them, the industry can collectively confront its fear. The Best Actress is their safety net. The fear, you see, is real but the prize is for illusion. The movie star goes back to being wealthy and desirable when she holds the gold Oscar against her heaving gorgeous young bosom.