Among the millions of persons who are devoted to watching the ostentatious Oscar-awarding ceremonies are tens of thousands of discriminating movie fans who know perfectly well all the defects of the show.   They know that there are better judges of the worth of movies than the Academy members, that the acceptance speeches are dull-witted and too long, that most of the categories are merely gap-fillers to extend the proceedings from 1/2 hour to three hours (for revenue producing purposes), that the entire show is little else than a self-congratulatory exhibition of a trivial form of art, if movies can even be considered that, and finally, unlike the grammies, no effort is made to provide entertainment between the pompous marches-onto-the-stage for the Academy firmly believes, against all reason, that the show is already the pinnacle of entertainment.    The worst of it is that the marchers-onto-the-stage take themsevles very seriously.  They also take their opposition seriously and offer up the most ridiculous patter of praise for them, concentrating on their nobility, humanitarian qualities and acting or directing genius.   We don’t mind.   Are we stupid?

Given that the show seems to be an outrage to commonsense, why does it apppeal to people who not only should know better but do know better?   Every major film critic of the last 50 years has taken at least one potshot at the whole business of Oscarizing but they are magnetized like everyone else.   Oddly, they draw up their own lists and vote, too.  The NY Times Film Critics and the L.A. Film Critics who, no doubt because they have more discernment, cannot resist going head-to-head with the celebrity-drenched Academy.    They realize few people care about their choices unless they confirm the Oscar-winning choices.   Preposterously, we have, too, Golden Globe awards in which the Hollywood foreign press put on their own extravaganza.  The Hollywood crowd patronizingly attends and accepts their prizes as if they care.  It is the polite thing to do.

Committed to playing the same game, the professional critics are, ipso facto, obliged to review the Academy choices with great solemnity.   Indeed, one gets the impression that they care more about the Academy choices than they do about their own.     The addicition is not limited to “the professionals.”   Just yesterday, Sidney Gendin, a man indisputably more judicious and artistically sensitive than any member of the Academy, (and I don’t mean that jestingly, ironically, or in any way other than downright sincerely), played the game in his blog and assigned points to previous Oscar winners with all the joy that loyal readers of movie magazines buy these things.    Are we stupid?

What explains the madness?   Clearly, there is some sort of mass hysteria, but saying that is not to explain but only describe.  What explains the mass hysteria?   It is dissimilar to the most extravagant and best known case of mass hysteria – the Hans Christian Andersen story of The Emperor’s New Clothes.  In this case, the impetus for hysterical blindness was the desire not to seem stupid.  I suppose that if somebody thought the latest Jean van Damme movie was the best film of the year he would seem (and be) stupid.    But what is at issue is the whole business of caring deeply.

The mass hysteria is not the classic medical mass hysteria in which people can, for example, be blind or paralyzed without any neurological disorder.    Caring deeply about something is not an emotional perversion best left to psychiatrists to explain.  It is not for psychiatrists to pronounce that the world is mentally sick.   (Especially when so many of them are themselves caught up in the “madness.”)    Perhaps the mass hysteria is akin to getting caught in “the red scare of anticommunism” that flourished 1918-1920, “the Salem witch trials” or “the Joe McCarthy” incident of the 1950s.   These were not play-acting for the sake of an evening’s enjoyment; on the other hand, perhaps our interest in Oscars is just innocent play.  When we go the theater and watch the villain get ready to kill the heroine, we pretend to be frightened but if we really were, we would rush onto the stage to stop him.   Or we would place a call to the police.   We permit ourselves to get caught up in the action and we seem to be very deeply involved but we are not.   It is the just way to enjoy the evening.  This puts our engrossed attention in a better light.   It is all pretense.  Imagine that you had to choose between watching the Oscars and allowing your neighbor’s cousin, whom you have never met, to die agonizingly in an accident.   Somehow, you could waive a magic wand and either save that person’s life or you could have a splendid night of Oscar-watching and have all your favorites win.  But you cannot have both.  To make the choice even more stark, suppose that by saving the person’s life, the Oscar shows get canceled for the next ten years.    The choice is obvious and I won’t ask you to submit yours.

The other night, I watched a professional basketball game and one of the superstars suddenly collapsed for no apparent reason and was rushed off to the Cleveland Clinic.  I still do not know the upshot of it.   The game continued but, immediately upon its conclusion, the players of both teams spontaneously gathered in a circle in the center of the court, linked hands and prayed.   When asked about this, one of the players (Lebron James) said they are just playing a game.  Nothing about it is serious despite the intensity with which they go about it.  Life is infinitely more important.   Clearly, for James and all the other players, it would be better to lose every game than have one their “own brothers” (his term for all players on all teams) die horribly and prematurely.  That may explain it.   We go about our Oscar-watching with intensity – as if it mattered, but it doesn’t, and we know it.

We are not so stupid, after all.