The Vault - Five Things I Learned (About White People) From a Marathon Viewing of Oscar Nominated Films

(Ok, so this would've been on the blog on Monday February 28th, but since the Oscars were the 27th it felt anticlimactic.  Even more so because I'd had a flurry of Oscar posts before the actual show.

But here it is now.  Enjoy.)




So Saturday I wrapped up my second week of marathon viewing of Oscar nominated movies.  Again, it was at White Marsh and again it was five movies and lasted all day and into the night.

And again, I learned a few things, but this time around I learned a few things about white people.


Apparently White People Plus Meth Equals Awesomeness.  I'd already been working on this thesis for a few years now.  I was a fan of Intervention and I'm sure you've already read my raving about Breaking Bad, but Winter's Bone sealed the deal.

Two components of Winter's Bone are "meth" and "white people." And the movie is indeed awesome.  It's so deserving of every nomination it got.  It's also the movie that convinced me to to try to get my unemployed white friends into the meth business.  Not only is it lucrative, but it makes for some stellar drama.


White Chicks Are Crazy.  Again, this was something I'd already been pretty sure about given the preponderance of reality shows and all the eating disorders and whatnot, but Black Swan sealed the deal.  That whole pressure to succeed is a beast.

So, while I'm half white, I'm totally comfortable being a slacker.  If success looks like Black Swan, I want nothing to do with it.


White People Don't Even Dream About Black People.  Inception is a totally twisted flick that spends a lot of time in the dreams of white people.  And in those dreams, there are no Black people.

I don't have a problem with Cobb not recruiting any Black people for his mission of inception; if he had anyone Black on his team they'd have stuck out like a sore thumb and queered the whole deal.


It's Possible To Make A Strong Movie With No Sympathetic Characters, So Long As Nearly Every Character Is White.  The Social Network is about rich, privileged guys at Harvard, which means it's instantly relatable to everyone in the country.  There's nary a sympathetic character in sight, with pretty much every character suffering from arrogance and greed.

Yet the movie really does work rather well.  I chalk that up to Aaron Sorkin's impeccable writing.  And the fact that the leads were all white.


Overcoming A Speech Impediment Is Enough Of A Hurdle To Build A Movie Around...So Long as Your Leads Are White.  Don't get me wrong; I found The King's Speech to be a delightful film.  But on paper it's basically about about a dude who gets a new job and has to stop stuttering.  Really?

MLK is a genuine American hero and he's yet to have his story told on the big screen, but some King conquering a stutter gets made relatively easy?  I call poppycock.

And those are the five things I learned, about white people, from a marathon viewing of Oscar nominated flicks.

(And if you didn't appreciate my poking fun at white people, kindly suggest to a) the Academy that they nominate more flicks with Black characters and b) Hollywood that they make more flicks with Black characters.)