On the 'Recognition' of Talent - The Academy and the Uncanny
January 28, 2024: The Barbie Blah-Blah
It is time for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to do in the case of actors what it has done (at least theoretically) for writers of screenplays: to separate the portrayals of original, fictional characters from portrayals based on more or less uncanny impersonations. The Oscars for screenplays, as you know, are bifurcated into Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. In the Best Actor category, this year, Robert Oppenheimer, Bayard Rustin, and Leonard Bernstein battle it out with a couple of originals. The winner will almost certainly be one of this triumvirate of impersonations.
In 2021, it was Will Smith as Richard Williams; in 2018, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury; 2017 Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill; 2015 Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass; 2014 Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking; 2013 Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof; 2012 Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln; 2010 Colin Firth as King George VI; 2008 Sean Penn as Harvey Milk; 2006 Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin; 2005 Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote; 2004 Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles; 2002 Adrien Brody as Władysław Szpilman. 60% of Academy Awards for Best Actor in the 21st century have rewarded uncanny doubling.
In the Best Actress category, again 2023 sees portrayals of Diane Nyad, Mollie Burkhart, and Felicia Montealegre Bernstein take on two original characters. In 2021, Jessica Chastain won as Tammy Faye Baker; 2019 Reneé Zellweger as Judy Garland; 2018 Olivia Colman as Queen Anne; in 2011 Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher; 2009 Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy; 2007 Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf; 2006 Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II; 2005 Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash; 2003 Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos; 2002 Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf; 2000 Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovic.
The Best Actress award is less dominated by the uncanny than Best Actor. Make of this what you will, but it may be that the Academy finds male impersonations more heroic and seductive, whereas impersonations by women suggest that ‘less acting’ is at stake, just wigs and costumes, a bit of an accent…I leave that to you.
In general, in terms of 21st century nominations, the majority for both Best Actor and Best Actress are for portrayals of original or fictional characters. The fact that these roles tend to lose out disproportionately to biopic doubling indicates that when it comes to recognition for awards, ‘recognition’ or ‘misrecognition in recognition’ is a decisive factor.
One of the complications this year has been whether Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose is ‘too much’ for his doubling of Leonard Bernstein. Did nose damage the sense of the uncanny, making misrecognition impossible? Did it become too canny an exaggeration of Bernstein’s ethnicity? It remains that, of late, imitation of the known other, often supported by vast amount of footage or archival materials to copy, simply impresses the Academy more than does the creation of an individual from written and acting talent. It’s a lazy form of judgment, a reliance on verisimilitude (or a caricature thereof), and a faux-authenticity by which to form an opinion.
The current storm in plastic tea cup - at least in the more febrile sectors of conventional and social media is the ‘snub’ directed toward Margot Robbie who is not nominated for her portrayal of the doll Barbie. I have not seen Barbie. It is not my cup of tea in the way that other movies based on children’s plastic toys are not. Nevertheless, the controversy - such as it is - is interesting to me for a few reasons. Not least there is the perceived need to have Margot Robbie nominated, to preserve the ‘Barbenheimer’ mythology of last summer. How could the lead on one side of a dubious marketing strategy win, and not the other? Well, thankfully, that’s not how things work.
It could be, however, that Barbie (unlike the role of Tonya Harding for which Robbie was nominated) is just a bad role for any actress, just as Batman is a truly shitty role - it’s how you play Bruce Wayne that really matters in terms of acting, and well, how much mileage is there in that?
And ironically, perhaps playing a doll does not work the same uncanny manipulation as playing another known human being does; ironic because in psychoanalytic terms one thinks of the mistaking of a doll for a person - the automaton mannequin Olimpia in E.T.A Hoffman’s “The Sandman.” Perhaps Barbie’s reversal of the uncanny reverses the effect on the arbiters of acting that is otherwise so potent.
There was, in the attempted uncanny return of Barbie, an idea that the doll which had been vilified by feminists might reverse in 2 hours the kitschy damage thought to have been done in its past. Barbie has been synonymous with vapidity, conformity, the ‘bimbo,’ and the kind of stereotyping that fans of the movie might deplore in other instances. Some of the same people who would argue perhaps against the abuses of ‘capitalism’ and forms of ‘colonialism’ (whatever these mean in contemporary activist parlance) did not balk so much as Barbie marched into Asia, for example.
To transform Barbie into a feminist archetype in 2023 and reward this in 2024 might have been to absolve the guilty pleasures of owning or admiring her in previous decades, but in the Robbie snub, no one gets off that easily. Yet, so many, it seemed, were almost relieved to dress up as Barbie at the cinema, to reclaim and remake her in the same nostalgic gesture. Sure, it was something of a kidult Harry Potter moment. Perhaps it was more ambivalent, to say “yes, and” to Barbie’s position and image in feminist/anti-feminist discourse. But this doesn’t necessarily make it a tour de force acting role for Margot Robbie, nor for Ryan Gosling or America Ferrara (the latter both nominated for supporting roles). Still, the film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, at least one of which - Best Adapted Screenplay - seems to play with semantics in the most self-serving of manners, but really, who takes the Academy particularly seriously at this point?
— James Reich
This is one of the infinity of discussions I never would have thought to have.
I assume that the skills required of an actor to "create" a fictional character include mimicry. I once read that Olivier thought that American comic actors were most skilled because of their expertise at impersonations. I once heard Clint Eastwood explain to James Lipton why he was a far better director than he was an actor. Paraphrasing, he knew what actors could play the parts, and he knew as an actor what parts he could not play. He opined that few actors were such chameleons that no part seemed beyond their scope; either he or Lipton suggested Daniel Day Lewis as an example.
Because no single role demonstrates an actor's breadth and scope an award for one measures fit more than chops, I suggest. If that is so, then it matters little for a singular award whether the role is an impersonation or a creation, it only matters if the viewer's disbelief is thoroughly suspended.