Lots will be written about how homophobia may have affected the decision. I'm not sure if it's as big of a factor as some say. I think the decision was more about "Crash" than it was about homophobia, though there is a place where the two intersect.
 Ed Garren on the Right Coast looking west. |
I first heard about "Crash" from neighbors in the RV Park in Valencia. Larry drove a tow truck for decades. If anyone knew the ins and outs of auto accidents and their aftermath, it was Larry. He and Sharon handed me their DVD of "Crash" and just said, "This movie is so true.”
I watched and was fairly unimpressed. I really don't think Los Angeles is as shallow and cliched as the scenes in the movie. The dialogue was rather unimaginative as well. When Sandra Bullock told her Latina maid that she was her best friend, I wanted to slap her on screen. Much of the dialogue in the movie might have been more accurately stated in voiceover, thoughts not spoken but often present.
But her character, the anxious, bitchy narcissist, probably anorexic as well, frightened of everything and everyone could be the archetype for many women on the West Side of Los Angeles.
Clearly this movie touched a lot of people, particularly among the academy, and that is pause for reflection.
I spent a lot of time working professionally in the field of Alcohol & Drug abuse on the west side of LA. I got to know a lot of people who live there, some second and third generation "industry" people. If I adjust my thinking to what I perceive as their perspective, the movie makes a lot more sense.
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"West Siders" are an interesting group of folks. Many seem to have little exposure to life east of Doheny. Some have established a beachhead in West Hollywood and are taking it over as their next colony, but their comfort level drops off the farther east they go.
When I arrived in the LA GLBT community 20+ years ago, the split between east and west was much more conscious and discussed.
When I worked in south LA, Compton, Watts, Inglewood, I found that declaring my time spent in those areas often evoked an interesting response self declared "liberal" people. Most of these people wouldn't go into those areas in daylight, much less after dark. I learned that when I had to commute from the South Bay to Hollywood in rush hour, Crenshaw moved very fast, not many white people drove it. I coined a term, "Schvartsaphobia" (the fear of black). And it's still rampant in America. All the white people I've ever known who've lived in predominately black neighborhoods (including myself and my brother) get the same response, "How could you live there?"
Sexuality may be compelling, but race still is center stage on the west side, and I suspect that many of the Academy voters may live west of Doheny.
 Under a falls in North Carolina. |
I come from a culture where women are allowed, if not encouraged to be overweight. But they absolutely are not allowed to be frightened, anxious, narcissistic or bitchy. Of course, the south has all of those things, but the culture does not encourage it. Women in the south who act those ways are considered weak, and weakness is not tolerated.
When I worked at Santa Monica college, a colleague had her first baby, and then openly discussed her reservations about having it, that the baby was taking up too much time and interfering with her career. Although I am familiar with post partem depression, this declaration (in essence) "I wish I hadn't had this kid,” is unheard of in most places.
In the movie "Spanglish" the narrator (the latina daughter) talks about her mother's employer and her fear of being "full,” eating, life and love. This west side mother, who lives behind a gate somewhere west of Doheny rejected her own daughter because she was heavy. She was constantly trying to get her daughter to loose weight, it was really pathological, but not that unusual in a culture whose by-line seems to be, "You can't be too rich or too thin,” as if somehow the two are connected.
It rang in a memory of John Heilman once telling me that Krispy Kreme doughnuts were really disgusting and he couldn't imagine eating one. Fine John, that's one more for me, thank you.
 By Ryan Gierach. |
The fear of eating defines anorexia, and like all fear, is the manifold root of many other fears in a person’s life.
I think the academy voted for "Crash" because many in the academy are terrified of a lot of things in life, most centrally life itself. My late cousin, Charles Odes Yearwood, who traveled all over America in his Kenworth truck said it best, "It's real pretty out there in LA, and the weather is real nice, but them people are all afraid of each other."
And just like in "Crash,” no one is really listening to each other. It takes a generous spirit to listen. Generosity and anorexia don't go together.
I want to be very clear, I'm not taking pot shots at the Academy per se, but it is a very exclusive club, and by nature relatively isolated from the rest of us. With all forms of isolation comes fear of anyone who isn't "us.” And the Academy is a very closed (and probably frightened) "us.”
My favorite director is John Sayles. He seems to be one of the few white directors in Hollywood who gets it about race, class and the economic destruction of small business owners, the historic middle class. I wonder which movie he voted for?
The Empire on the West Hollywood City Council is a classic example of an "us" gone mad. All three look west, not east for inspiration. The only inspiration they get when they look east is the desire to develop it (the east side) into West Hollywood's version of the Wilshire Corridor. None of them are listening to the ever-growing numbers of residents who scream "We don't want our city turned into the west side or Manhattan. It is a tragic state of affairs, but one that seems to permeate most parts of the country where power is wielded.
So "Crash" winning sort of makes sense when you consider the compelling issue of modern day racial divide and cross cultural fear, which is far more compelling than historic homophobia. It also makes sense if you consider the movie a confession and the win an absolution for past Hollywood sins with regard to race by voting for a movie in which all the white people are really sort of awful, filled with fear and anger, only seeing color and nothing behind it.
 By Ryan Gierach. |
I really don't think most white people are that bad. Though some of the ones I've known who live west of the 405 get close. As Whoopi Goldberg exclaimed in "Good Fences,” "Save me from the crazy white people!!"
When I first moved to LA in the 80s, I made friends with a black man who has been involved with LA and it's politics for decades. He currently has a high level political job, so I can't offer his name. In one conversation I asked him, "Is it my imagination, or is LA the most schizophrenic place about race I've ever lived in?" He had spent summers in the rural south at his grandparents farm, so like me, he shared a cross cultural perspective. His answer was, "No, it's not your imagination.” He agreed with me that in the rural south, race was taken head on, with quiet dignity of the likes of Rosa Parks, in the face a generation of southerners. He went on to say that in LA someone decided to just not mention race and that would fix the problem. I went on to study the history of race and racism in California and found things that would make ones skin crawl, but are never mentioned by most white people. California has one of the most lurid history's regarding race of any state in the country. There was no official "Jim Crow,” but everything else was as bad or worse.
And again, look at the Academy that had to be confronted by a public relations campaign a few years back to confront it's own internalized racism.
I see the "Crash" vote as an much as an attempt at absolution as anything else.
 By Ryan Gierach. |
As for homophobia, if I had a dollar for every uninformed person who's told me, "Oh, but there isn't any homophobia like that now,” I could open a bank. In that regard, the issue of homophobia relates to "Brokeback Mountain" not winning the best picture award. Most Americans, including too many under 35 GLBT persons, think that we've won the war on homophobia, that it's not much of an issue anymore.
And with a Hollywood that is filled with closeted GLBT persons, most of whom have no real power in the system, I don't see much changing until a similar public relations campaign happens regarding the GLBT closet in Hollywood.
I don't know if anyone was watching Barbara Walters last week, but in her interview with George Clooney, he all but came out in the interview. There were questions about marriage, which he emphatically answered that he would never be getting married. Then gay came up, and his response was something to the effect that Batman is gay (he played Batman in one of the movies). Barbara was puzzled and asked him how he knew this. George Clooney's answer was, "I made him gay."
So, another year in hypocrisy central, the schizophrenic world of entertainment, where one's public persona must be as neutral as possible. And in the current world, being an open GLBT person is many things, but it is NOT neutral.
We've still got a lot of work to do. Maybe George Clooney will start something.
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Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. He is originally from the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. Ed has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Frontiers news magazine, and other books, including "Out of My Mind,” a pictorial memoir by Kris Nelson. He is currently working on a book about Addiction in America.
Ed Garren can be reached, even in the Red America’s wilds, at