OSCAR NOMS

Media award shows are fun—but ultimately crap. Even when everything is operating correctly, all you get is a consensus of opinion about something that's nearly impossible to quantify or objectively defend.

How can you tell if a given performance is better than some other performance? How can you remove such factors as role, writing, directing, editing, cinematography, makeup, wardrobe, and even background music.

The fact is, there are a plethora of obscuring elements that can make you think this guy is better than that other guy.

Ultimately it's mere subjective nonsense.

You like a guy who's playing a villain? Not so much, if he displays a character trait you consciously (or unconsciously) associate with some actual villain in your life.

Does the fellow cheat on his wife in the movie? That's fine for him, but what if your spouse cheated on you in real life? How can you forgive the make-believe event if you can't bear even to think about the real version?

Directors and editors have been known to carve out a performance after the shooting is done and the actors have headed down to some Palm Springs spa to recuperate. George C. Scott would have come off a lot different in Dr. Strangelove if Kubrick hadn't used all the goofy takes he insisted Scott play around with after the "real" stuff was in the can.

And now we get to add race to the mix.

Some folks are saying this year's list of Oscar nominees is a "slap in the face" of people of color.

For that to be true, the nominating committee (or however it's done) would have to deliberately put some white guy on the short list in a given category, despite the fact a black guy did a better job in another movie.

Those protesting the nominations have to believe it's not remotely possible it turned out there were more juicy white guy roles this year, legitimately knocking every black guy performance out of contention.

I think we know there are more roles for whites, both juicy and pedestrian, but even if movies contained the same ratio of blacks as in the population—roughly one out of ten—it would still be unlikely to get one of those performances in the top five. That's an inescapable mathematical fact.

And whose fault is that?

Making movies is a business. Creating and marketing a major motion picture is hideously expensive—at least for the sort of big-spectacle movie that rakes in bales of cash at the box office.

Movie makers have a financial duty to their investors to consider the audience when they get together to engineer a new product. I believe white teenage males still form the biggest market share for blockbuster-type films.

On the other hand, for the smaller movie—perhaps even something shot in digital format and edited on a personal computer—a much greater variety of characters can be used. If only because there's a substantially smaller investment of money.

Add to that new venues of release—streaming video from various sources—and there can be an explosion of juicy minority roles to chose from. Along with a correspondingly smaller chance for an all white nomination list. (Assuming the Hollywood establishment is willing to pay attention to fringe productions.)

Even so, there will still be a nearly one hundred percent chance the award show will, in the end, be crap—for the reasons enumerated above. And you could probably add "low-budget production values" to the list of performance-obscuring elements.

In any case, all this variety is out there, huddled in the near future. Can anything be done now?

Well, sure: set quotas. Minorities can lobby for at least one person of color in each category, regardless of quality.

Just to be fair, right? And PC folks know it's a lot better to be fair than to be accurate.

Or: Give everybody an award and be done with it.

It seems today there is no element of our culture that does not breed rancor and claims of discrimination.

(And I mean discrimination on the basis of race; awards are already supposed to be a case of discrimination based on some other quality.)

Obviously there are many areas of racial discrimination that used to be pretty much okay: voting, housing, jobs, etc. But nowadays we seem to be seeking parity on all sorts of things: award shows, movies in production, the white/minority ratio of folks shot by cops.

And every instance of unbalance is seen as a deliberate conspiracy to dis some race or promote another, a conspiracy run by secret cabals that appear to control all aspects of human life on this planet.

Nothing can ever just happen anymore. Everything happens "for a reason," and that reason is often an evil one.

I guess it's what you get when so many people see the world as a supernatural entity that possesses personality, a universe that votes behind the scenes to promote or destroy this or that segment or individual.

I just don't see any evidence for this view.

Not that humans can't perform that function, be the sort of natural-born a-holes willing to take up the slack in a universe that's not paying sufficient attention to us.

Actually, the proper rule of thumb is to figure some misbehaving guy is just stupid, not actually evil.

But where's the fun in that?