Boycotting the Oscars

It's been a while since I've posted anything as it's been a hectic year for me (graduate school, etc.), and it's around this time that I pick my choices for who's going to win big at this year's Academy Awards. But this year, I'm not going to pick or choose the winners as I will not be watching the Oscars on Feb. 26th.

The reason for this is due to the devastating news I've been reading in the last few days as the new president-elect (whose name I dare not write) signed an executive order of banning Muslims from entering the United States. Not only does this ban affect the entry of refugees from war-torn Syria, but it also affects the Oscar-nominated artists like the filmmakers for the Short-subject documentary, White Helmets, and Asghar Farhad who was nominated this year in the Best Foreign Language Film category for The Salesman.

One of the reasons I enjoy watching the Oscars every year is to celebrate film as it is an international art form and seeing countries from around the globe be acknowledged for breathing new life into the film world. As I write this post, I can't help but remember the story of Billy Wilder receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1987 Academy Awards. He spent the majority of his speech thanking the Immigration officer who stamped his passport and gave Wilder the chance to flee his home country of Germany after the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich. Had Wilder not have the chance to live in America, he would not have made the canon of films that have since been recognized as the greatest American films of all time (Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, etc.).

Not only did Wilder find solace and promise as a filmmaker in America, but so have the other immigrants who came to this country like Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Mike Nichols, and the countless other directors, actors and writers who fled to America, a country that has been called "The land of opportunity." Try imagining films like The Graduate, Psycho, and Scarlet Street not being made if there was a ban on European filmmakers from entering the United States. Consider what Easy Rider and McCabe and Mrs. Miller would have looked like had cinematographers Lazlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zigmond been denied access to the United States and forced to live in fear in the wake of the 1968 riots in Czechoslovakia; would those films have ever been made? Imagine living in a country where Milos Forman didn't direct One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Amadeus, two films that the Academy honored as Best Picture Winners. Imagine if John Cassavetes was denied from leaving his native country of Greece, who would have created American Independent Cinema?

It is understandable that we do live in a world of fear due to acts of terrorism, but excluding a group of people from entering the United States based on their religion and their background is not American, it is tyranny. The sad fact that certain artists cannot enter the country and be applauded for their Oscar-nominated work is tragic, which is the reason I won't be watching the Oscars this year. Instead, I'll be watching the films made by proud immigrants and refugees.