"Hurt Locker" Director Kathryn Bigelow

Co-head New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis just gave an interview with Jezebel, and she held little, if anything, back. “Let’s acknowledge,” she says right off the bat, “That the Oscars are bullshit and we hate them. But they are important commercially… I’ve learned to never underestimate the academy’s bad taste. Crash as best picture? What the fuck.”

It’s the right time to be talking about this. Oscar nominations were revealed this morning, and no one’s shy about framing these year’s race as a context between James Cameron and his ex-wife, Katheryn Bigelow. Bigelow, of course, is the underdog. Cameron’s Avatar is the highest grossing movie since, well, Titanic. Yet Dargis’ analysis of the Oscars accepts that Dargis’ status as underdog makes her simultaneously top dog: “The only thing Hollywood is interested in money, and after that prestige. That’s why they’ll be interested in something like The Hurt Locker. She’s done so well critically that she can’t be ignored.” Man/woman; money/prestige.

Dargis understands that Bigelow’s achievement comes out of her work specifically in the action genre and not in, say, romantic comedy (for which she reveals a healthy distaste): “Something like a woman winning best director for directing an action movie and not a romantic comedy is symbolically important. Whether it then leads to a lot of women doing things outside of the pathetic comfort zone of romantic comedy – and I say that as someone who loves romantic comedy – we’ll see. We know that because women are allowed to make romantic comedies that they can make romantic comedies. That’s in everyone’s comfort zone. The idea that a woman can be a great action director is not is everyone’s comfort zone. That’s [Bigelow's] exceptionalism.”

Hollywood has always profited off of framing women, selling them. Dargis thinks that if women can profit off of themselves — sell themselves as action directors, war movie directors, whatever they want — it’s as close as we can get to a step forward. Is Hollywood getting better? Is Hollywood going to change? In Dargis’ words: “It’s pretty shitty right now. Anything positive can only help a little bit. How’s that for optimism?