As many of you know, my husband and I are big movie buffs. We see at least one movie every weekend, and we read and write and talk about the Oscar buzz for months before the Academy Awards air on TV. (For some reason the Academy still doesn't consult us when selecting the winners or nominees, but we're working on it). As you can imagine, we went all out for the Oscars last night: a red-carpet of napkins across the table, finally using some beautiful gold embellished china for our snacks, popcorn in crystal glasses, and of course, a homemade ice cream sundae bar.
We stayed up way past our bedtime to watch all the awards being given out. Unlike apparently the rest of the world, I absolutely despised La La Land, finding it flashy, superficial, cynical, and somewhat sexist. So when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, after a confused exchange during which I assumed they had trouble reading the tiny font because I sure would, announced that the winner of the most coveted award of Best Picture was La La Land, I threw my ballot on the floor and stomped to the dining room to begin eating Thin Mints.
As you probably know, this wasn't the end of the story. A gracious producer of La La Land was handed the correct envelope which indicated that in fact Moonlight had won for Best Picture. He displayed that goodness of humanity as he walked to the microphone and cleared the situation.
Um.. Oops. My bad. Just kidding.
I mean, seriously, how do you recover from that? You just gave the biggest award of the night to a group of people who thought their wildest dreams had come true, and then passed a card to them revealing it was all a sick joke...ahem, mistake...and they were forced to hand over their dream-come-true award to another group of folks.
Not only that, but movies mean more than just good acting and neat shots. We care about movies because they dig deeply into our emotions, they portray things on the screen we can't always express in our everyday life. It's hard for me to imagine two more diametrically opposed films from 2016 than La La Land and Moonlight. La La Land is about the American dream from the perspective of "if you work hard enough, you can achieve your dreams." It features two privileged white folks who have a zillion opportunities for success thrown their way. It displays the glitz and the glamour of accomplishment and success, of sugar-sweet romance and dreams coming true. Moonlight, on the other hand, is a story about a black boy growing up in Miami, son of a drug addict mom, neglected, skinny, runty, and coming to a new understanding of his sexual orientation (he's gay). He doesn't rise above the poverty stricken area in a conventional way; he becomes a drug pusher himself in his adult life and makes a fine living doing so. He never seems to find perfect happiness or contentment in a romantic relationship; rather the film is about the struggle and the moments of hope that blip on the radar. For the Academy to choose a movie about struggle and challenge, a movie about minorities and stigma, over a movie about the white American dream and romance makes an enormous statement about our society. Moonlight was an important movie of 2016 because it showed a story that hasn't yet been told, a story that many of us are unaware exists. It transports us to someone else's shoes and allows us to see a part of the world we don't understand and wouldn't necessarily voluntarily seek. When the Academy followed through to take the Oscar away from La La Land and give it to Moonlight, it made a statement that the Academy is looking for more movies about real life, movies about the gritty, real, day-to-day challenges of real people, rather than movies about fantasy and dreams.
My bad...Did I do that???
I think about this #OscarsFail and I just have this palpable compassion for those involved in making this error. I think of the anger and frustration on the part of the La La Land team who was swept up to the stage to be yanked off again. I think of the humiliation of the presenters, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunnaway who aren't often in the spotlight these days, who will have weeks of social media torture. I think of the team behind Moonlight who had a belated and subdued celebration of their victory and who did not have sufficient time to say thank you. I even think of Steve Harvey, who had to relive his humiliation of reading the wrong Miss Universe winner (the internet immediately speculated a conspiracy theory about him being involved). In our society, we do not handle mistakes well. We hold them against individuals and companies for years or decades. We rarely take responsibility for our mistakes publicly, and when we do, we offer an explanation or an excuse.
Immediately amidst the craziness, Warren Beatty began to grab for the microphone in order to explain and excuse himself. He told the story that he had the wrong envelope that had the Lead Actress winner rather than Best Picture and that he and Faye were confused as to what had occurred. He provided an explanation, an excuse.
We are a culture that simultaneously expects perfection and is burdened by errors; a society that buries mistakes and assigns mountains of blame. When we personally make mistakes, it is hard for us to acknowledge them without shifting the blame elsewhere. Sometimes, myself included, we are so embarrassed about a mistake that it consumes us with anxiety, regret, and fear. I think of one of my personal heroes as a child: Steve Urkel on Family Matters:
Steve was hopelessly uncoordinated and socially awkward. He threw bowling balls out the window and knocked over dentistry equipment and blew a fuse in the living room and would always say, with a sheepish look on his face, "Did I do thaaaat?!?!"
Part of what made this so amusing was the fact that it was a shameless and odd thing to say. If you accidentally threw Carl Winslow's bowling ball out the window, the options for action might include: 1. profuse apology and self-shaming; 2. running with intense speed to get away; 3. crying; 4. coming up with some other excuse. We rarely ask someone, "Did I do that?" or "Was that my fault?" because we really don't want the answer to be "Yes, Steve, you did do that!" because then we are truly at fault. Then we've done something wrong and we are at the mercy of someone else to give us forgiveness.
Last night, the Academy chose the Steve Urkel route: they didn't rip up the card and pretend La La Land won and move on. They owned up to it: Yes, yes, we did do that, but we care enough about who we are as an organization and the movie that we wanted to reward that we will own up to our mistakes.
So...Lent...
Wednesday, of course, is Ash Wednesday, which begins the liturgical season of Lent. Traditionally, Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return, and Lent is the responsive 40 days of fasting and penitence that follow, days in which we confess both that we are sinful and that Christ is our salvation. Growing up surrounded by Roman Catholics, I had always taken this to mean that we give up those tempting candy bars and four-letter-words we all love. Sometimes, Lent has been a chance to start something new, to take on a new spiritual discipline, to focus on the empty tomb on Easter Sunday.
I think the Oscars last night show us that we are hungry for Lent to mean something more than tulips and colored eggs. We are challenged in Lent to own up to our failures and shortcomings, to the ways that we are not perfect and that we are not God. We are challenged in Lent to hand over the dream trophy to someone else. We are challenged to return to the truth about who we are and whose we are. We are challenged to celebrate the Moonlight moments of real, gritty, uncomfortable life, instead of just the La La Land moments of glitz and glamour.
As Lent comes upon us this Wednesday, I invite each of you to walk with me on this spiritual journey of letting go of the things that aren't fully us, even when they appear glamorous and opulent. The things that keep us from a real, substantial relationship with Jesus Christ. The places where we might long to build up our own ego at the expense of Jesus in our lives. On this journey, we will embrace fully the gritty, earthy, truth of life, of who we are, and of the earthy, humble messiah we worship. Let us walk with the human Jesus on the agonizing walk of love through Lent, from ashes to cross, and let us learn together more about who we are, and who Jesus is.
