When the Oscar nominations were released on Jan. 15, Vox.com, the site that aims to “Explain the news,” protested that a film had been “snubbed” in the drawing, appearing with only two nominations, one for Best Picture. “Selma,” the story of Martin Luther King Junior and the civil rights march he led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965, was up for Best Picture and little else.
According to the helpfully organized list by Vox writer Todd VanDerWerff, the exile of “Selma” was the latest sign that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science had failed to recognize the goodness of African-American artists. His analysis turns the concern of the judging process from the aesthetic judgment of films as art to be recognized into a moment to affirm an ideology through art.
Whether or not “Selma” deserved more nominations can be left up to film critics. But the thinking displayed by VanDerWerff and others who criticized the results turns even “Selma” itself into something less than a work of art, something that is not the product of rational thought and practical skill that can be appreciated (or criticized) on its merits, but an act in the political sphere by the artists involved that then creates the opportunity and obligation of others to affirm the rightness of the act.
Nominations for lead actor David Oyelowo and director Ava DuVernay, as he called for, might or might not be merited, though the voting pool which recently awarded “12 Years a Slave” three prominent Oscars seems unlikely to have consciously “snubbed” the film. But both actor and director seem to be for VanDerWerff not primarily artists but political agents.
This kind of analysis (or “explanation”, as Vox might prefer) seems to leave no room for the aesthetic judgement that ought to be the primary concern when recognizing artistic achievement. The reasons “Selma” wasn’t competitive in the nomination process, beyond a “really old, really white, and really male” Academy, are the bungled advertising, unoptimized release date, and a glut of similar films that stole the spotlight from what is, again, not an artistic achievement but a moral act that needs to be rewarded, or part of a political campaign that was executed inexactly, or even a product that needed a better market.
Conservatives are equally guilty of this twisting, pragmatic commentary. While many have examined the subtle psychological themes of “American Sniper,” many conservatives have praised the film as a “A Patriotic, Pro-War on Terror Masterpiece,” like Breitbart.com that supports the troops at war and veterans at home with a pro-America takeway. Supporting troops and America are good things, but if we value art because it is moral before it is excellent we’ll lose all standard of judgment for art itself.
When this sort of ideological posturing is given dominance over aesthetic judgment, art becomes simply an inefficiently communicated, expensively-produced extension of morality, philosophy, or politics. When we lose the ability to accept or contest judgments about art on its own grounds, we lose the realities that it communicates to us, the skill of the artist and the beauty of their work. We’re all dragged down to the level of “Christian” novels that prize a moral or theological self-affirmation over artistic merit for itself.
These goals are not incompatible and not bad for themselves, but they should be kept to their proper sphere before they are prioritized in others. The primary end of art is artistic excellence for itself, and imputing ideological commitments onto a film will make us prize bad films over good. The art of ideology is an expensive, attractive racecar with no engine. It has value for many exterior reasons, but not what it is meant to accomplish. It’s beautiful (though perhaps less so than something meant first to be beautiful, like art) but can’t get you anywhere, just as reducing “Selma” to an extension of political action makes for excellent propaganda but does nothing for the art of filmmaking and the men and women who practice it.
