The people connected with Brokeback Mountain, including me, hoped that,
having been nominated for eight Academy Awards, it would get Best
Picture as it had at the funny, lively Independent Spirit Awards. We
should have known conservative heffalump Academy voters would have
rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture.
Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many
living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe
rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and
the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch
with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour
has it that Lions Gate inundated the Academy voters with DVD copies of
Trash - excuse me - "Crash" a few weeks before the ballot deadline.
Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the
punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the
letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver.
Full text source: The Guardian newspaper, 11th March 2006
