Through web surfing I see that the Oscar award show is tonight. Who knew? I haven’t seen any movies in the past year, but I checked the Best Picture nominees to see whether any looked familiar. Here they are; and by the way, isn’t 10 nominees a lot?
* Bugonia
* F1
* Frankenstein
* Hamnet
* Marty Supreme
* One Battle After Another
* The Secret Agent
* Sentimental Value
* Sinners
* Train Dreams
Not only have I not seen any of those movies, I have never heard of any of them, with the single exception of One Battle After Another, which I have heard of only because yesterday I read someone saying it was the worst film he had ever seen. I have of course heard of Frankenstein, but I had no idea it had been remade again. And if The Secret Agent is based on Conrad’s book, then I am familiar with the book but didn’t know someone made a movie of it (if that is what happened).
Which illustrates, I think, how divided our country is, not just politically, but culturally. I take it that something like half the country is interested in movie awards and maybe even cares who wore what on the red carpet. The other half not only doesn’t care about the Oscars, it doesn’t care about the movies, either. While the divide wouldn’t precisely correspond to our political split, my guess is it would come pretty close.
And so Red America and Blue America drift inexorably apart.
