You Can't Talk To A Psycho Like A Normal Human Being

Dear Snide People: When you talk about the American Dream with air quotes and derisive comments you are only demonstrating your own ignorance and misinformation. The American Dream is the concept that you can arrive at Ellis Island with nothing but the clothes on your back and through hard work, perseverance, a firm sense of reality and clear eye on your goal you can pull yourself up to a social standing where you are respected by your peers and able to care for yourself and family with comfort. The American Dream far predates ideas of ‘fame’ in the modern sense through youtube or reality programs. The American Dream even predates the concept of someone being a millionaire—nobody but heads of government had the ability to amass that kind of capital until the late nineteenth century.

The American Dream is almost solely about a land of opportunity where if you demonstrate ability and work ethic, you can be recognized for your achievements. No one will care about your upbringing or past acquaintance with squalor or ignorance. I actually think that this dream is enduring into the twenty-first century. So enduring that my definition probably appears to be far too simple, or even taken for granted by most. Modern America is very far removed from their immigrant forefathers who came from countries where caste and class ruled supreme, and where your position at birth truly dictated your choices. Of course the struggle to pull yourself out of a more obscure, resource-poor area is going to be more intense, I’m just saying that the American Dream promises that it is possible if you want and work for it hard enough.

The American Dream hasn’t been lost by this generation, it has merely been abused by rhetoric so that the definition is almost buried by disdain and smarmy remarks by media and intelligentsia who want to demonstrate their superiority to grasping lower individuals. I repeat: a pop star rocketing to the top of the charts with an inane, manufactured album is not achieving the American Dream. Neither is winning the lottery or becoming the new “It” fashion girl. It’s about an achievement-based society where you are given the chance to work your ass off and keep what you worked for without anybody looking down their nose at your efforts.

Ok, I’m done, that’s been bothering me for years. Those who have been holding back your sarcastic comments may now release your worst.

Alrighty, I’m going out on a limb this year. In an effort to sabotage any later attempt I may make to pretend that I had predicted the outcome of the entire Oscars, I’m putting my guesses/wishes out two days before the event. Note that I have eliminated the categories that I am either apathetic toward or lack knowledge about. Also be aware that I will be making it a personal effort to use the phrase “when I saw it at Sundance” as frequently as possible. Feel free to assume that I will be using my stuffiest tone.

Best Visual Effects: Inception. They made a city fold into a cube. And it was cool.

Best Cinematography: Black Swan. The paranoid space of most of the show was such a fantastic contrast to how they filmed the dance sequences.

Best Art Direction: True Grit. Yup.

Best Song: Toy Story 3’s “We Belong Together.” Any animated film that could make me cry that hard was obviously doing something right, and I think that something was partly Randy Newman.

Best Documentary: Restrepo. I’d be thrilled for Exit through the Gift Shop if by some miracle they won, but I doubt it. I don’t believe the quirky value or what they address about the nature of contemporary art is “deep” enough for The Academy. I saw Restrepo at Sundance last January; not only was it well made, the subject matter was much weightier in ways the self-important Academy likes best.

Best Animated Film: Toy Story 3. As if there was ever any real competition for this one (I’m in the process of founding a non-profit to encourage the Toy Story makers to go and save Bo already).

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network. Aaron Sorkin is a god and should finally be recognized as such. The Cohen brothers are already established deity; they’ll be fine without it. Also they had more fertile material to work with in the first place. Aaron magicked the analytical introspectiveness out of basically nothing.

Best Original Screenplay: Inception. Breaking into Chris Nolan’s brain should be Leo’s ultimate goal.

Best Supporting Actress: Hailee Stanfield from True Grit. I get that she probably won’t win. But she should. Almost as much as Jacki Weaver from Animal Kingdom should, but I know she has even less chance. When I saw her performance at Sundance last year, she was the terrifying character that I carried around in my brain for weeks afterward. There’s something so sinister about grandma-seeming softness disguising a moral code that would make Mussolini blush.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale in The Fighter. This is the category where I am blatantly hedging my bets, since he’s swept everything so far. I truly wish John Hawkes in Winter’s Bone would win—when I saw the movie at Sundance it was his intensity and inscrutability that captured my imagination and fascination. Also, the fact that he was able to be that terrifying while being named Teardrop was proof positive of his craft.

Best Actress: Natalie Portman in Black Swan. I’m most likely never going to watch that movie again, but good ol’ Nat completely immersed herself into the madness of that role, it was heartbreaking and stressful to watch.

Best Actor: Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. He. Has. To. Win. I’ve always adored Colin Firth, largely because he has ever been so comfortably Coliny. In contract, this is the role of his lifetime. This is character where he pushed himself to the limits, and I want to celebrate how un-Darcy like he was from the rooftops.

Best Director: Darren Aronofsky of Black Swan. This man’s pysche lives in a dark and thoroughly unwholesome place. I’m genuinely worried about what drives him to take the audience to the emotional places that he does, but I can’t deny the fact that he is successful with every single attempt. So, bravo.

Best Picture: The King’s Speech. I really loved some of the other contenders, but as a complete film I felt like The King’s Speech was not only masterfully executed, it really had a soul. They captured an individual’s struggle and made it a deeply emotional journey for everyone watching. Truly enduring and important filmmaking was happening there. So I want it to win.

I feel like our culture is too preoccupied with our own sense of history. This isn’t peculiar to this century; most time periods that are richest in art and monuments were peopled by civilizations with an acute knowledge of how their own lives might influence their descendents. The problem I see with this particular brand of societal self-awareness is our inability to discern between mundane and truly important and far-reaching decisions.

This issue has been niggling at me with an increasing level of irritation, because I realize that I am a prime example of this problem--trust me, the irony that I'm discussing this on my blog is not lost on me. I feel the same urge to document, display, and decode the minutiae of my life as if my personal feelings about last week’s episode of Community or what color my hair was at my birthday party is somehow significant and hidden with potential nuance and depth. It’s a fairly abhorrent system when everybody is constantly behaving that way. I believe that the fixation on preserving a record of everything, on providing a running commentary for each day, actually inhibits our ability to be fully present.

The sad part is that I’m still going to feel compelled to update my status every day on facebook, even when I know that that very act will only highlight how thoroughly I’m already filtering my reactions and feelings through a historically compact and bloodless mechanism.