God Shuffled His Feet: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Last Night’s CODA Win at PGA

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

There was no denying CODA’s momentum. It was something that could be tangibly felt after its SAG win. The only way you couldn’t feel it or couldn’t think it is if you were in denial about it. Even though a part of me knew it would happen, I was still kind of shocked when it did, as I’m sure many were. Though some were convinced it would win, like Jeff Sneider, for instance. If you loved the movie you were convinced it would win.

We are living through a major shift in almost everything. That’s because we’re living through a generational shift. The era of the Baby Boomers is almost over. They had their glory days in the 1960s, went adrift in the 1970s, got comfortable in the 1980s, settled into malaise in the 1990s, and by the 2000s they were activists again. Now, they are almost senior citizens in that last phase.

A whole new generation is going to influence everything.

The Good

CODA answers the call in more ways than one. The first, it’s a five-hanky movie. No one is immune to its charms. It gives a previously sidelined group, in this case, the hearing impaired, center stage to be applauded and seen. It does this with great performances across the board. The writing and directing is straightforward, unadorned, and adequate to serve the actors who do all of the heavy lifting. This explains why no directing and editing nominations. On the other hand, Sian Heder is a former actor herself and thus, her ease with working with her cast is evident. It is hard not to love CODA and more, to love the characters in CODA. In its own way, it is the King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire. We feel for the people on screen and we want to see them do well in life, to never be hurt, to always be happy. Giving our vote to them is not hard.

There isn’t a single voter who won’t go home happy after that win. You saw the same kind of euphoria in doing a good deed when Parasite won. You could see it on the faces of the Oscar attendees – pure rapture. Life’s meaning is presented at last. A sense of purpose is not something that we take lightly. It is in every cell in our bodies. We evolved this way. CODA is a living embodiment of an affirmation on Instagram or Twitter that gets high engagement because everyone wants to surf the wave of the greater good. That makes it a perfect fit for how our culture is changing and dividing.

Ironically, CODA is actually a populist movie. It’s just that it made $1 million, few people saw it, and to see it they have to join Apple-TV. Then again, they might release the movie theatrically. You know, for the peasants to enjoy. Hey, the peasants need entertainment too.

I actually love CODA. Not even the sleaze of awards season can make me hate the movie. It is a sweet movie. It reminds me of the Lifetime movies my daughter and I watch religiously, though obviously a cut above in terms of quality. But the oeuvre is not that far off. You are in safe, capable hands. You are going to have a winning, satisfying experience. The complications will be few. This is a good world full of good people doing good things.

When CODA first came down the pike from Sundance, no one thought much of it. Those who watched it thought it was good but not great. Not great like Best Picture great. David Fear called it “every Sundance movie rolled into one.” Good enough. Sweet. Warm-hearted. This is not a new phenom in the Oscar race. Trust me. I feel like I’ve written that same sentence every year for 22 years. We’re not that complicated of a species when you get down to it. We respond to similar emotional beats. CODA picked up steam because of the elongated season and people had time to ruminate on all of the offerings. Like Goldilocks. This porridge was too hot. That porridge was too cold. But THIS porridge was just right. So who can complain about that?

Bravo to the CODA team. Bravo to Sian Heder. Bravo to the actors especially. Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, Daniel Durant, and Emilia Jones. And yes, bravo to Apple on becoming the first streaming platform to win at the PGA and to win at the Oscars (which it now seems likely to do).

The Bad

Theatrical died last night. Did you notice? Probably you didn’t. Emotion has a way of overriding everything else. The emotion for another “first” is definitely driving the euphoric feeling the film industry has when they make history, when they use their vote for the greater good. It is such a driving force that they’re willing to abandon all rules that came before to make it happen.

Netflix was seen as the boogeyman, the company that had come not to address the pressing need of an industry that could not award the kinds of movies Hollywood could not stop making – superhero franchise movies. That meant there was hesitancy in awarding any of their films the top prize. But be careful what you wish for. We’ve now rung a bell we’ll never be able to un-ring. The market pressure on Hollywood meant that, in general, they needed to make movies that made money, especially opening weekend. Oscar movies used to make money. Even Parasite ended up with $53 million.  Argo, The King’s Speech, and Slumdog Millionaire were all $100 million dollar babies.  Right around 2014 is when things started to change, however. While The Hurt Locker made just $17 million, it wasn’t really until Birdman’s win that Oscar box office began to slide.

The ratings for the Oscar telecast also began to slide right around this time. These things are most definitely connected and illustrate, very clearly, what path the Oscars have chosen. COVID took whatever remained to the point where Nomadland made just $2 million at the box office and it was a studio film. CODA has made just $1 million. So in we’ve gone from Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, with a five-picture ballot earning $140 million to CODA in 2022, 14 years into the preferential ballot, earning just $1 million.

You might think, well, how is any of this bad?  CODA is a populist crowd-pleaser it just never had the chance to make it into theaters because that was never the end goal. Driving customers towards Apple-TV was the end goal. And THAT, my friends, like it or not, is the future of whatever will be left of the Oscars in the coming years. Their experiment to expand the ballot by including more populist, genre movies has failed. They only became more insular. Streaming is their answer to what they all want: a way to make the movies they want, a way to get lots and lots and LOTS of cash for those movies, and nothing to do with the pesky rabble who aren’t ready to adapt to the new way of watching movies.

Generation Z is already there. Once you remove market pressures and focus on subscribers you are free to do almost anything. It opens a world to those who want to join it. It also closes off a world and creates a bubble. I hope I live another 50 years to see where it all ends up.

The Ugly

In the post-Green Book win, post-Trump trauma of 2018, which coincided with the Me Too movement and eventually the massive uprising of 2020, the Oscars simply can’t be what they used to be. What they used to be lives in the past. The transformation taking place in the industry, and on the Left more broadly (all institutions of power, like education, science, journalism, tech) needs to follow the path towards change. That change is about recognizing and celebrating marginalized groups primarily. Remember months ago we talked about the pendulum shift from the “me” of the 1970s and 1980s, to the “we” of now? And how the climax of the “we” cycle is purges, persecutions and witch hunts?

That’s the dark side of when the collective is valued over the individual. They are so devoted to being a community of good people doing good things that they MUST purge the bad people who aren’t on board. Thus, we have a bizarre dynamic, a low-frequency hum of fear that ripples through everything Hollywood does, even the PGA awards last night. It’s so bad that the New York Times was forced to finally write an op-ed about the crisis of freedom of expression:

For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.

This social silencing, this depluralizing of America, has been evident for years, but dealing with it stirs yet more fear. It feels like a third rail, dangerous. For a strong nation and open society, that is dangerous.

On the one hand, you have a group that believes they are the righteous do-gooders but on the other hand, you also know that their balls are to the wall or they’ll be wished out into the cornfield. While they probably felt some obligation to award Campion and the Power of the Dog because it is both written, directed and produced by Campion, holds the record of a film directed by a woman with 12 nominations and is the first time in history that a woman has been nominated twice for Best Director, and it would have been the very rare LGBTQ-themed film to win Best Picture after Brokeback Mountain almost won in 2005 and Moonlight at last broke the barrier in 2016.

But Apple gave them an off-ramp. They could reject Power of the Dog while also embracing a film about a marginalized community. They picked the more traditional movie that doesn’t take you into any risky territory or express the darkness of humanity. Remember, that isn’t who they are right now as a large consensus, even if enough of them have voted that way — the BAFTA, the DGA, and even the HFPA and the Critics Choice. CODA gives them a way out of having to do something they don’t really want to do but also a way to come out of it looking good, which is their ultimate goal.

The high you see on their faces after a win like CODA, or even Parasite, or even NOMADLAND is that look of relief as much as it is a look of joy. They have had their cake and eaten it too. They got to pick a movie that will give them great headlines while also picking a movie they liked. It isn’t all that different from how the Oscars have always been. The only difference is that now they have an actual bubble to disappear into with streaming. They don’t even have to pretend to appeal to the ticket-buying public. They want people who can afford Apple-TV, Netflix, Hulu, etc. They see that as their future and, indeed, it is their future.

And it is our future, we Oscar watchers. We are very likely watching the end of the Oscars as we once knew them – a network television spectacular. They will hang on for a while but eventually they will have to end their 100-year reign because the Oscars were about the movies and the movies aren’t the movies they once were. They are going to be niche creative, like everything else. Content aimed at a specific group. Older generations like me might be bothered by this but the younger generations – and this is their world now — won’t care.

As Jeff Snieder said to me on Twitter, “stats are for suckers.” Yes, they are. Because here we have a situation, for the first time since Driving Miss Daisy, where the director doesn’t really factor into it. The purpose it serves is bigger than its director.

It is what it is. Dr. BigTech, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Streaming