On the Oscars

A special Academy Award. Of merit. Was bestowed upon on ALL the men. And women. Who have worked in film laboratories since movies were invented. Director Christopher Nolan accepted on their behalf.

Are you kidding me? THESE people are the people who make film happen. And the fact that the "Academy"-- which is a nominal insult, literally and nominally, to Plato, at the very least--feels it's acceptable to belatedly recognize, in such an offhand fashion, tonight, the numberless, nameless people who have slaved under the yolk of this nonsense, "since movies were invented," is the bend sinister of all Oscar ceremonies, heretofore. But what do I know? I haven't lived for all time, after all, nor have I lived since movies were invented. Please.

Please give me the sacred monsters of yesteryear--please give me movie stars like Burt Lancaster and Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis--actors who at least understood that, while these people went unnamed, they were the only reason movie stars had a career. That silence measures more greatly than this current too-little-too-late propaganda treatment with no individuals to name. Not one. Not a one.

Where is your "Schindler's List"? Where are the people you have saved from death and forgetfulness? You don't even have one. As much as that film repels me, in an almost meaningless way Schindler's List at least did remember the "Schindler Jews." Can you imagine such a term? "The Schindler Jews." Child, this is the world we live in.

It's almost--almost, and I distinctly said "almost"--like the half-hearted recognition of war heroes or victims of Shoah that we hear of every day, these days, which is also quite, quite, and very, very much too late. Only the problem is this: those earlier sacrifices weren't done willingly. Yet, in peacetime or war, under National Socialism or Holyrood, the late-term memory of the machine that grinds us into dirt for worms, that only belatedly remembers we existed at all at any point--seventy, fifty, twenty years, ten years later--doesn't redeem any of them in any way, whatsoever. Good luck. Good luck with this "Oscars'" world. I only hope you could ever do better with it than I ever could.

It is indispensably disgusting. And this message of history is what you should take home, in my, very humble, opinion. History never leaves us. You only have to read it. But apparently it never means you won't repeat it.