The 71^st Academy Awards
THE BLACKLIST TODAY

HOLLYWOOD-On 21 March, 1999, Elia Kazan was given a Life Achievement Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy Awards are the best pageantry the United States has, while serving absolutely no public interest. The resources that get sucked into the annual tribute paid to the entertainment industry dwarf annual contributions to charity. And of course, all native Californians who have lived anywhere near the filmmaking industry understand that the outcome of the Awards is a political process based on the advertising budget behind the nominees.

Once a year, all the millionaire entertainers get together to give themselves awards, and pat themselves on the back; rarely in the past have so many millionaires gathered together in the same place. The Academy Awards are the industry's opportunity to toot its own horn. It constitutes nothing short of shameless hucksterism. Actresses engage in a vigorous competition to be dressed in the most exotic gowns - to stand out, of course - and dress designers compete to have their creations worn by the "stars," who agree to be their models, who also wear millions of dollars of "loaned" jewelry, since modern stars can no longer afford the kind of jewelry that was once obligatory for the icons of the silver screen. While the politics of the Academy have denied brilliant filmmakers of any peer recognition in the past, especially African American directors and producers, the one political move of the Academy that has caused the biggest ruckus since Marlon Brando had an American Indian stand in on his behalf, was the decision to give a Life Achievement Award to Kazan, who is widely remembered as an informer during the McCarthy Witchhunt.

In the Sunday Los Angeles Times, the two opinions published regarding the occasion of Mr. Kazan's violation of his former-colleagues' trust and confidence, both revert to the old Cold War mentality. The one commentary suggested that Kazan was right, because the Communists really were a conspiracy. The second commentator held that not only was the conflict between left and right the source of the controversy regarding Kazan's turning on his friends, but the drive to perpetuate memory of this betrayal was due only to the histrionics of the actors and actresses, and technicians, who cannot forget Kazan's faithlessness. In fact these notions ignore the real issues that caused the pain that is the source of modern bad feelings for men like Kazan.

The Communists were never a serious threat to the United States. There was no bomber gap, no missile gap; what the Russians were, in fact, was scared. The U.S. has always had superior technology, whereas the Russians barely came out of the Stone Age less than a century ago. The United States Government knew this, but they also needed a pre-text for keeping wartime emergency powers after World War II ended. And thus was invented the Cold War: a "hot war" being a war of actual battles and casualties, and a "cold war" being really a war of intrigue and sabotage. The Soviets, however, could only afford a Cold War, because they knew that the Soviet Union would not survive an open war with the United States, and so did the United States Government.

The American Communist Party never had any chance of coming to power in the United States, largely because it went against the grain of many American values, especially the centralization that Leninist-Marxism involved, and especially Stalinist Marxism. The United States Government has operated as a police state since its inception, when one of its chief concerns was the return of fugitive slaves to their bondage. As a result there was a tremendous reservoir of genuine resentment in the country, due only to the oppressive policies of the republic, which made the divisions of class and race iron-clad, and legally binding. As a result there were populist movements in the early part of this century, which the Communist Party sought to co-opt.

The bottom line is that the Federal Government needed a pre-text for inventing the National Security State. This was the beginning of the CIA, the NSC, and what is generally referred to as the Intelligence Community. Loyalty oaths were required, and membership in the Communist Party was outlawed, to defend the United States from a paper tiger. What was outlawed was ideas, and the environment of tension and fear that was generated from the McCarthy hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee was one of the primary engines for coercing the American public to cooperate with a government that was out-of-control. Today J. Edgar Hoover has been dead for about thirty years, but for those of us who remember the world as it was when he was alive, the country was an unrepentant police state.

The strategy of the republic, since its inception by the founding father slavemasters, was to be suspicious of the public, and any signs of intelligence on the part of the people was a cause of alarm. There was a time when the republic actually had laws against teaching black slaves to read and write. This embodied a deep drive of the republic to keep the American people divided by pitting them against each other, and nothing did that better than the prosecutorial orientation of the Federal Government. The HUAC hearings had a devastating impact on American society. Civil rights were randomly violated, and individuals were threatened with the full force of the Federal Government's punitive power, unless they would agree to become informers on their fellow citizens. The impact was so strong that afterwards Senator McCarthy was stigmatized for polarizing American society. And Elia Kazan was an active collaborator with that polarization process.

One of the great benefits of the Witchhunts was the ideal that people should not be prosecuted for their political ideas. However it should not surprise anyone that the Establishment of Hollywood decided to support a panderer to the police state, because it was the Establishment of Hollywood that created and maintained the blacklist. The entire episode underscores how the right to due process was undermined by the HUAC hearings, because without a conviction by a legally qualified judicial court, individuals were ruined professionally based on little more than accusations. The victims of the Witchhunts are entitled to be outraged that Hollywood would give a Lifetime Achievement Award to someone whose most notable achievement was to act as a collaborator with American fascists; and anyone who doubts that J. Edgar Hoover, and Senator Joe McCarthy were fascists, just isn't connected to the real world.

The real purpose for awarding Kazan an award is not to honor him, but to make the Academy's members feel good about themselves. Nowhere else is there so much pageantry that means absolutely nothing. Of course, entertainers are skilled professionals who are entitled to honor themselves and their peers for excellence. But in a society that is starved for heroes, the tinsel icons of Hollywood make for a poor substitute, for there is no better way to undermine an individual's dedication to the solidarity of the human community than to give them a million dollars to make a motion picture, to give them a vested interest in the status quo. Their perspective is suddenly different, when all they have to do is show up at a restaurant to get public attention. These celebrities are part of the media's general inclination to distract the American people away from the record numbers filling American prisons, and the bizarre psychopathic crimes that are taking place daily, even as overall crime rates decline. All direct results of the war the Federal Government has carried on against its own people, which the blacklist was nothing more than concrete evidence of.

Should Hollywood forgive Elia Kazan for his collaboration half a century ago? Probably yes. Should the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have awarded him a Life Achievement Award, probably not. But Hollywood is famous for being a town of contradictions, the factory of dreams that are unreal and artificial, propping up a world that is real, with illusions. Until the American people are tired of living with a two-faced system of government that lies to them outright, and then uses sold-out millionaire-celebrities' clout to get the American people to support the power of a police state that is putting ordinary Americans in prisons and jails in record numbers, the Academy Awards will remain a mocking travesty of America. How many Americans died from exposure during the four hours the Academy Awards sucked up, which no one who watched it will ever be able to reclaim? While homeless veterans and the poor and the weak and the helpless witness the great and the celebrated receive awards, wearing outfits that cost more than these impoverished souls will ever see in a lifetime, it should give all Americans pause to consider the cost of this tinsel system of celebrity, that prizes coddled self-absorbed actors above common human decency.