February 22nd was a glamorous night; it was the annual Oscars ceremony. The night rapidly progressed, and the moment that everyone was waiting for had finally arrived. It was time for the presentation of the final and most highly esteemed award. Julia Roberts gracefully entered the stage to reveal the chosen nominee for best picture, “and the Oscar goes to…Greenbook.” The camera then panned over to Spike Lee storming to the back of the Dolby Theater following this announcement.
Lee was the director of Blackkklansman, a movie up against Greenbook for best picture, so when Greenbook beat his film, it appeared that he simply had a major case of the sour grapes. However, a few days after the ceremony, it became evident to me that Lee was certainly not the only person to be upset about the win, and that his reasons for disapproval were due to more than just sheer jealousy.
The amount of controversy that surrounded this win made me curious as to how the nominees and winners are chosen in the first place. It turns out the voting process that determines which filmmakers receive awards involves a strict procedure with very specific guidelines. The film has to be voted on by over 6,000 film industry professionals, and there are multiple ballot submissions from over 24 categories. Additionally, all the votes are sent to an accounting team who tabulate the votes in a process that sometimes takes up to 1700 hours. The Academy has followed this procedure for over 80 years, but even with the complexity of the process, mistakes are still made, and upsets are bound to arise.
Some of the biggest Best Picture upsets in Oscar history include: “How Green was my Baby” beating “Citizen Kane” in 1942, “Forest Gump” beating “Pulp Fiction” in 1995, and now, in 2019, “Greenbook” beating “Blackkklansman.”
Greenbook attempts to depict the story of Don Shirley, a black musician touring the deep south to perform piano during the 1960s. The movie is called Greenbook because that refers to the travel guide that Tony and Shirley used to stay in places that would be “safe” for African Americans during the Jim Crow era. The film mainly focuses on the relationship between Shirley, who is very eloquent and cultured, and Tony “Lip” Vallelunga, who Shirley hires as his driver and for protection during the musical tour. Tony Vallelunga and Don Shirley strongly contrast in more than one way. Shirley is very respectable and intelligent. He is, in fact, a musical genius. Tony is the initially racist character who is very uncultured and eats more than anyone I have ever seen. However, throughout the course of the movie, he develops into a more likable, less racist character because of his experience with Shirley.
When I watched the film I honestly found it quite engaging and enjoyable. It had a catchy soundtrack, made me laugh and even…*almost* cry. I am no movie critique, but as a student in Marshall’s video class, I do not hand out the “good movie” title lightly, and I was not alone with my positive reaction. The academy and my peers who also saw the movie seemed to agree with me. Henry Thomas a Mendocino High School senior, for example, said, “I thought Vigo Morrison and Mahershala Ali were great with the acting. Also, I thought the cinematography was well done.”
After more analysis and further research, I realized that Greenbook did not receive negative feedback for its production quality, but rather, for the way it unrealistically paints racial relations between whites and African-Americans during this extremely racist time in American history. Spike Lee compared the academy awarding this film to a referee making a bad call in a sporting game. He also expressed that awarding this film was like taking a step back from the progress that’s been made with racial issues in the film industry. He and other critics agree that the movie and Academy played it safe with this film and were attracted to the warm and fuzzy feeling it produced.
In other words, Spike Lee was not the only one who had problems with the way Green Book portrayed the inter-racial relationship. For example, culture critics like the Times’ Wesley Morris questioned the accuracy of the struggles that Shirley faced in comparison to the hardships that African-Americans actually suffered through during this time. He says, “It does nothing to address or acknowledge the infrastructural problems that keep the races divided. If anything, the enthusiasm for a movie like Green Book only makes the problem worse in some ways because it makes it seem like the movies don’t care about the way racism actually works; they just want to make racism go away” (Morris, The Daily). The movie felt “satisfying;” not necessarily a good thing in terms of the racial issues depicted through the movie. Wesley also states that “This movie is not the solution to anything. It is the perpetuation of the same problems that our entertainment’s been giving us since it started.”
Greenbook also possesses qualities of “The magical negro” archetype, where a black character’s sole purpose in a film is to help the white protagonist overcome their major character flaw. In Greenbook’s case, Shirley fulfills this role of being the “perfect” black person to help open up Vallolongas eyes so that he can realize not all black people are so bad.
Another critique is that the audience was experiencing the story with little regards to the reality of the situation. Tony Valllonga’s character is given a full and complex life with employees, a wife, children, and more. Shirley, on the other hand, remains a mystery all the way through the credits. Not only does this make it so the creator’s of the film portrays Shirley as a character just there to help Vallelunga overcome his prejudices, but it also doesn’t pertain true to the actual Don Shirley and his life. Family members came out very upset after the release of the movie due to the fact that they represented Shirley as a lonely man with no one but himself when in reality he was very close with his family members.
The movie received a lot of attention, and when I first watched it, I understood why. However, many of the morals and messages that came from the Best Picture winner were more fantasy than reality. Watching a movie for more than just entertainment can certainly change one’s perspective, as watching and then analyzing Green Book certainly changed mine. Not only on this specific