All the World’s a Screen: ‘Green Book’s’ Best Picture win is instantly questionable

Humans are imperfect. Put around 8,000 of them together to try to agree on one thing, and you’ll get some imperfect results. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is one such experiment — and it, more often than not, yields those imperfect results.

For decades now, but especially in recent years, the Academy Awards have polarized viewers with the their questionable decisions. On paper, they’re supposed to recognize the best of the best in each of 24 categories, but add voting politics, actual politics and a plethora of other factors into the mix (like legacy, past snubs and sheer popularity) and you get winners not everyone will agree with. Just consult my Twitter timeline during Sunday’s 91st Oscars — it ranged from vehement disapproval to unfiltered elation from one tweet to the next.

Sunday’s ceremony concluded on a sour note, as “Green Book” took Best Picture. Sour is truly the perfect word to describe it; it didn’t feel right to see “Dumb and Dumber” director Peter Farrelly accepting cinema’s highest honor; it didn’t seem right that a film whose script was called out for its lack of accuracy in portraying its African American protagonist won Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture. But the real underlying sourness of it all was that it didn’t seem right that this self-proclaimed prestigious voting body had apparently taken a step back in terms of its definition of what it means for a film to be named Best Picture.

Bear with me — “Green Book” is not a bad movie. It’s not Best Picture quality, but it isn’t a trainwreck either. It has two good performances at its core (Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Don Shirley), an adequately-paced plot and it leaves you feeling warm and full of hope — or, at least, it gets points for earnestly trying to. The problem with the film and its baffling victory really boils down to two questions: Who gets to tell what stories? Who gets to dictate what stories are important?

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “Green Book” producer Octavia Spencer said she doesn’t think a story about a certain culture must be told exclusively by people of that culture.

“Should Asian people only tell Asian stories?” Spencer questioned. “Should African Americans only tell African American stories? I don’t think we should ever get in the business of saying who should be telling certain stories. It’s crazy to me.”

But when the production and execution of a film are neither transparent nor respectful, then, especially in our culture today, controversy is simply inevitable. And once a drop of controversy drips onto a film, it’s probably better to leave it be and not elevate it for all the world to see.  

Farrelly, a director whose Wikipedia page reads,“mostly famous for directing and producing quirky, slightly offensive comedy and romantic comedy films,” shouldn’t be anyone’s first choice to handle a film about race relations. Yet he did, and technically it wasn’t as objectively bad as some of his “slightly offensive” comedies, but its content and post-release handling illustrated how Farrelly wasn’t entirely fit to handle the story’s themes.

“Green Book” is too reductive for a society that has moved on to produce nuanced tales like “Black Panther,” “BlacKkKlansman” and even “Vice.” While racism still exists in our world, Farrelly’s film brings no new solution or thought to the table; if anything, its victory almost sets us back a couple decades. Whereas these other films are keenly aware of how past struggles clash and deal with the present in fairly complicated ways, “Green Book” is simply stuck in the past.

To make matter worse, Don Shirley’s family publicly criticized Farrelly and his writers, which included Nick Vallelonga (son of Tony Vallelonga, portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in the film), for their skewed portrayal of Shirley’s life and personality. Again, “Green Book” is not a bad movie in its own right, but the problematic handling of a black man’s life in a film supposed to be about overcoming racism creates some pretty murky waters that most Oscar viewers were praying the Academy would steer clear of.

But it happened. “Green Book” won Best Picture — and I can’t believe I just typed that sentence. It’s a sign of the Academy’s elusive taste, of course, when one year they award Jordan Peele’s original script for “Get Out” and the next year they award Farrelly and Vallelonga, but it’s also a reminder to all of us that the Oscars are not king.

I’m positive there are at least 8,000 people (myself included) who thought “Eighth Grade” was the best film of the year. If we all coalesced in one place at one time and declared it thus, who’s to say our opinion is less significant than the Academy’s? Yes, the latter has prestige, but that depends on its audience affording it that prestige. It’s up to us to decide if we will take the Oscars seriously. Even if a more publicly favored movie like “Roma” or “A Star is Born” took home Best Picture, its win would be meaningless without the importance American audiences place on the Oscars.

Humans are imperfect, yes, but each one of us has value. One person may think “Green Book” is the Best Picture, another “Eighth Grade,” heck, another “Bohemian Rhapsody” — everyone is entitled to argue for their favorites. The reason people get outraged when the Academy awards “Green Book” is really because they feel that the decision establishes an objective truth that this movie is the greatest achievement of the year, when it’s really not.

The point is, we shouldn’t take the Academy’s decision to award a problematic film to be the end of all things. Everyone can and should award their own Best Picture award to the one movie that left them feeling something they hadn’t before or  that taught them a crucial lesson. After all, I think many voters who earnestly loved “Green Book” did so because they genuinely thought it was an important story. They had the biggest platform to make their voice heard, of course, but each one of us can choose to either buckle under the weight of the Academy’s clout and judgement or to individually keep championing the stories that truly mean the most to us because every opinion, whether delivered from the Oscar stage or not, matters.

Isa Uggetti is a sophomore writing about film. He is also the lifestyle editor of the Daily Trojan. His column, “All the World’s a Screen,” runs every other Tuesday.