No, Really, I Come to Bury Oscar

Excitement over the Killers of the Flower Moon movie made in my community translated in me being interested in the Academy Awards for the first time in many a day. I was especially interested in Lily Gladstone, nominated for best actress, and Scott George, nominated for the best original song.

Gladstone was nominated for her portrayal of Mollie Burkhart, the woman whose bravery and determination eventually helped expose the murder of Osage people by white men trying to secure the wealth of their oil. George's song "Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” was featured in the movie in a scene showing modern Osage dancing.

George and several Osage singers and dancers performed the song onstage, a historic moment in itself. "Wahzhazhe" is the name of the Osage people in their own language before it was Franco-fied by the French-speaking traders who met them, and Osage people shot off fireworks near town when the performance aired.

He lost to "What Was I Made For?" from Barbie. Academy members often pride themselves on their liberal or even progressive attitudes about most social issues, but they have always been gun-shy about going all the way to elevate something entirely from another culture and in another language. The first movie not shot in English to win a statue was the Korean horror move Parasite in 2019.

While "Jai Ho" won best song from 2008's Slumdog Millionaire, it was an English translation of the song in the soundtrack. "Naatu Naatu" from the 2022 Telugu-language action movie RRR was the first and only non-English song to have won an Oscar. The vaunted progressivism goes out the door when given a chance to reward music from Native Americans -- and correct the gross caricatures of  "Indian music" from movies of years past. The Academy's songwriting members went with a hit song from a hit movie about one of the most ubiquitous toys in America.

Gladstone, along with Annette Bening (Nyad) and Carrie Mulligan (Maestro), played a historical character. Diana Nyad is an out LGBT journalist who, after several tries, swam from Cuba to Key West in 2013 at the age of 64. Mulligan played Costa Rican actress and activist Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, the wife of composer Leonard Bernstein, the maestro of the title. Winner Emma Stone of Poor Things and Sandra Hüller of Anatomy of a Fall played fictional characters.

Despite my antipathy towards the awards, I've always believed that the nominees for different acting categories are generally good performances from talented people. Yes, Whoopi Goldberg won the Best Supporting Actress category in Ghost, but every theory has holes.

But when given the chance to make history and buttress its progressive bona fides by rewarding Gladstone's performance, or to honor actresses who brought two other extraordinary women's lives to the screen, the Academy's acting members thought it best to laud an actress who plays a woman given the brain of her unborn child who then indulges in lots of sex and socialism.

Over the last 25 years or so, women playing characters in normal situations or playing historical characters have occasionally won Oscars, but it's not the way to bet. When there's weirdness or excessive sexuality (or both), lay your money on the actress playing that character. Because the Academy voters probably will.