An optimistic Oscar night this year

(Editor's note: The following column appeared in the March 3, 2017 edition of the Finger Lakes Times in Geneva, NY)

By Michael J. Fitzgerald, FLT columnist

Last Sunday evening’s Oscar presentations were funny, poignant, heart wrenching and even chaotic.

But the evening carried with it a shiny patina of hope, too.

The chaos came at the tail end of the evening in the announcement of best film.

An envelope mix-up prompted actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway to announce the wrong winner, a mind-blowing error quickly rectified.

That foul-up dominated entertainment news for days, with much deserved attention paid to the graciousness of the cast of “La-La Land.” That film’s ensemble was already on stage accepting their Oscar, only to be told the real Academy Award winner was the film “Moonlight.”

It was role modeling at its best. No warning. Just doing the right thing. And with grace.

That major mishap almost eclipsed the gentle and mostly understated messages by award presenters and recipients about hope, inclusiveness, and a world in which people work to solve differences.

Those messages — delivered in tones alternating between playfully comedic and carefully measured — were in stark contrast to the grim, angry and most often fear-filled rhetoric we have heard repeatedly in recent weeks from our new president and a way too-compliant Congress.

Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel live-tweeted to President Trump early in the show, later telling the audience he was worried. The White House hadn’t fired back a single fiery tweet of complaint.

Huge!

On the more serious side, Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal condemned the U.S. president’s Mexico-wall scheme.

“I am against any kind of wall that wants to separate us,” he said.

Later, songwriter Justin Paul gave a shout-out to his former teachers at Westport, Conn. high school when he accepted an Oscar.

“I was educated in public schools, where arts and culture are valued,” he said, widely interpreted as a comment about new federal education secretary Betsy DeVos, a charter-school advocate.

Perhaps the most forceful political statement was by Iranian astronaut Anousheh Ansari, read on behalf of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. Farhadi won for Best Foreign Language Film.

“My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S. Dividing the world into the ‘us’ and ‘our enemies’ categories creates fear,” he said.

The statement drew a standing ovation.

The films by nominees and winners alike provided positive, uplifting social commentary.

The plot of “Arrival,” a science fiction tale about aliens landing on earth, focuses on the fear-filled human response to the aliens’ arrival from space.

From the first appearance of orb-shaped spaceships, it was painfully obvious the aliens’ superior technology discounted any chance of building a wall to keep the extraterrestrials out.

But while the Earth’s military locked and loaded — the standard-issue fearful human response to most unknowns — a plucky young female linguist managed to communicate with the aliens, who, it turned out, had no hostile intentions at all. They simply had come to help the human race.

Imagine that, immigrants who want to be of service.

The power that film and images hold to shape our opinions and emote strong feelings was central in all the Academy Awards presentations and the films they honored. So was a strong sense of teamwork, cooperation and compassion, three things conspicuously absent from the national political stage today.

Oscar Wilde once wrote: “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

It might be that in the 21st Century, we need to pay more attention to the moral compass of our art and less to our shrill political shills to lead us to the “kinder, gentler nation” proposed by former U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1988.

We can have that, but only if we demand it.

Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.