What Parasite's Win Means

RESPECT!!!!

Even though I predicted that Parasite would win Best Picture...a huge part of me didn't think it actually would. Despite so much momentum going into the ceremony, I didn't want to let myself get too excited. After all, I remember the disappointment of last year when Roma seemed destined for Oscar glory, only to lose to the book that shall not be named. Even after Bong Joon-ho's surprise win over Sam Mendes in the Best Director category, I was skeptical. But...it happened. Parasite won the Academy Award for Best Picture. This is obviously a huge deal. In the 92 years that the Oscars have existed, it is the first film in a foreign language to win this prize. And this was a big night for Parasite even before it won Best Picture. It also took home more Oscars than any other film this year, winning 4 of the 6 categories it was nominated for. To put that in perspective, Joker was nominated for 11 awards, but only won 2. The Irishman, which had 10 nominations, didn't win any.

In many ways the story of this year's Oscars is in direct opposition to last year's. Last year, the nominees were very exciting, which made the winner so anticlimactic. Last year, Roma entered the ceremony as the frontrunner, but other Best Picture nominees included the likes of The Favourite, BlacKkKlansman, and Black Panther. This was a lineup that was truly unexpected. The nominees were more original, more out there, and more against the grain than most Best Picture nominees are. Even the harsher critics of Black Panther would need to admit that its nomination was a huge deal, and showed a sort of evolution in the Academy in terms of what sorts of films they would consider; the nominees felt like they wouldn't have been the nominees even five years earlier. When Green Book ended up winning, it took all the air out of what up until then had been a refreshing lineup.

This year it was the exact opposite. The nominees in general were blander. I've gone on record saying that I wasn't a fan of most of the nominations (for a look at some superior nominations, check out The 5th Annual Miles Awards) but this doesn't even have to do with my personal preferences. Even people who liked The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and 1917 much more than I did would have to admit that they were low-hanging fruit as far as the Oscars go. Even the more technically unconventional Oscar picks like Joker or Jojo Rabbit were fairly Academy-friendly fare. The exception was Parasite. Last year, we had great nominees and a disappointing winner. This year, there were disappointing nominees, but ultimately the best film of the year won.

Bong Joon-ho holding up just one of his four Oscars

It is worth noting that this observation probably had a lot to do with why Roma lost and why Parasite won. Last year, having so many atypical Best Picture nominees meant that they probably split the vote of the younger and more contemporary-leaning voting blocs. Those who wanted to use their vote to champion diversity and more original filmmaking had multiple options. The largely older white male members of the Academy, however, who still trend towards "classic" filmmaking and are opposed to streaming services and comic book films and profanity were able to rally behind Green Book, handing it the win. This year, voters who responded to Parasite really had it as the only option. All of those who gave Green Book the win last year were probably divided between 1917, The Irishman, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It is also worth saying that Parasite probably could not have won this had Roma not gotten so close last year. Roma came so close, and its loss felt so unexpected, that I think it opened up the idea that a foreign language film could win with more clarity than ever before. While it might not have removed the stigma against subtitles entirely, it erased the supposed common wisdom that such a win could NEVER happen. This is ultimately a really great look for the Oscars themselves. As critic Justin Chang wrote in this great article, the Oscars needed Parasite more than Parasite needed the Oscars. Parasite was already a phenomenon and will certainly be a classic. But by giving it the win, the Oscars have regained some credibility and clout it had been starting to lose.

So, what does Parasite's win mean? It certainly broadens the horizons of what a Best Picture winner can be. I expect we're going to be seeing more and more foreign language films enter the field each year, and be recognized in other categories more frequently as well (it's a trend that's already happening and will only get more prevalent). It is also going to change the way Oscar campaigns are run. Distributors who previously wouldn't put too much heft into campaigning for a foreign language film might be more willing to pursue awards with more vigor in the future. It's also going to affect theatrical distribution. Parasite has already been very successful theatrically, and after this win its box office is just going to continue to grow. Theaters are going to start looking for "the next Parasite" and will be turning to the international market to do so. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if Neon really leans into this as they promote the wonderful French film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which competed against Parasite at Cannes and is getting a wider release in the U.S. in four days. After Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a big success with audiences and the Academy, it lead to a boom in the release of Chinese wuxia films, and I can only hope that Korean cinema (which has been some of the best in the world for a while now) will see a similar surge in popularity. And it's for things like this that the Oscars really do matter. Despite how easy it is to write off the Oscars as irrelevant, the fact of the matter is that they still can dictate trends. Movies are really expensive to make, and for the most part nobody's going to give someone money to make a film unless they think it's commercially viable. But if a producer wants to win an award, they're more likely to invest in something based on its artistic potential. Even though the Oscars rarely recognize the best films of the year, their existence allows the best films of the year to get made at all. It's one of the reasons I allow myself to spend so much time thinking about awards season each year despite its many problems, because it really does dictate the trends of the industry.

The cast of Parasite on the red carpet

Now, all of this doesn't mean that the Oscars are fixed and will be wonderful for all time. After all, many thought that the Best Picture win for Moonlight a few years ago signaled a turning point for the Oscars, but here we are three years later with just one actor of color receiving an Oscar nomination (for a movie that gave Harriet Tubman superpowers no less). When Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director many celebrated, but that was back in 2009, and only one woman has been nominated since (Greta Gerwig). 92 years in and still no black person has ever won Best Director, and we've only ever had one female nominee for Best Cinematography (which I think might be the most shocking Oscar statistic out there). Progress still needs to be happen. But that doesn't mean that Parasite's win isn't amazing. What's also refreshing about Parasite's win is that it doesn't feel like the result of politics and campaigning. While, like all the nominees, Parasite was part of a major awards campaign, it was hardly the best financed film in the game, and the combination of subtitles and its critical analysis of class dynamics meant it never had the easiest route to a Best Picture win. 1917's Oscar campaign was built on the technical difficulty of making the film. Joker's campaign leaned heavily on the film's popularity and tried to ride the coattails of its dynamic star. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood had a baffling campaign which tried to imply that if you didn't vote for it you didn't love movies. But Parasite's campaign seemed to boil down to...vote for it because it's the best film. There wasn't an angle, and there wasn't a gimmick. Its win feels like it was based off of quality as opposed to tricky awards season nonsense. For once, it felt like the Best Picture award went to an actual best picture.

Now, onto the Oscars party which will surely go well...

NOTE: When I first started writing this, I expected it to be a rundown of the Oscars ceremony as a whole, but it obviously ended up just being about Parasite. And honestly...that kind of sums up this Oscars ceremony. The only thing that made it notable was those four awards for Parasite. Everything else about the ceremony was pretty much fine. None of the awards were major surprises: this might be the first year that I named all 24 winners as either a "will win" or a "could win" when I made my predictions. Which says more about the lack of upsets than my psychic powers. There were no amazing "water cooler" moments, nor were there any huge disasters. For example, Janelle Monae's opening number was great because of course it was because it was Janelle Monae, but it also wasn't a revelation, and felt strangely removed from the ceremony itself. The films most highlighted by the number were A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which was snubbed by the Academy in all but one category, and even more bafflingly, Midsommar, which didn't score a signal Oscar nomination. Following that up with banter from former hosts Steve Martin and Chris Rock further highlighted, for me at least, why a host is really helpful for a ceremony like the Oscars. Even if you get good presenters, without a host, there can never be a defining tone to the Oscars. It becomes a series of awards as opposed to a general celebration.

That being said, there were some choices I liked about the ceremony. Namely, that the Oscars are starting to be made for fans of the Oscars again. Here's what I mean by that. Montages, for example, tend to be a hit with people who love movies and will watch the Oscars simply because it's the Oscars. But people who don't care as much and will only maybe watch the Oscars if nothing else is on tend to find the montages irritating and unnecessary. The same goes for a long runtime: fans of the Oscars will watch no matter the length, but those who don't care as much will get annoyed if it goes on too long. In the past few years, there has been an emphasis on keeping the ceremony to three hours, with producers even promising that it will be a shorter ceremony (a promise that is pretty much always broken). But it doesn't serve the ceremony well. Things like montages add to the overall celebration of the art of film. And I was glad to see that they actually let the winners had their moment and didn't cut Oscar winners off. There were a few times that multiple Oscar winners were on stage and only one got to speak before the camera pulled away, but the infamous Oscars exit music was never utilized. Even when certain people began to ramble and even when all of Bong Joon-ho's many wins went on longer because he utilized a translator (the phenomenal Sharon Choi, who is a director in her own right), nobody got "played off." These are probably not choices that everyone would agree with as being good, but I very much appreciated the sentiment behind these decisions. This year's Oscars thankfully didn't feel desperate to court viewers at the expense of the ceremony as a whole. It may not have been a rather blah ceremony over all, but I hope the Oscars continues in this direction. And maybe gets Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig to host.

 
And frankly who cares if the ceremony itself wasn't exciting because DID YOU HEAR THAT PARASITE WON BEST PICTURE?!?!?! I screamed when it happened. And it truly was an amazing capper that nearly salvaged this awards season. Here's to it being the shot of adrenaline needed to make next year's Oscars more consistently excellent.

We do not deserve Bong Joon-ho