my bad
It's rare I have to straight-up rescind an opinion, but here I go.
I'm not too proud to admit it: I spoke without thinking. I certainly never meant to suggest that Bigelow isn't a great and worthy director, or that The Hurt Locker is anything but a great film. Although I stand by the statement that I can name a handful of much better films from 2009, that's true every year: the Best Picture award never actually goes to the best picture. And I certainly don't begrudge Hurt Locker the way I do movies like Crash or Slumdog Millionaire.
From Ms. Early, tieittothetree:...frankly, I feel like the Academy often leans towards stories with lots of feminine, emotional pathos (THE BLIND SIDE, PRECIOUS, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, etc). I'm not at all worried that the Academy isn't recognizing "unmasculine viewpoints."
That's a very valid point, and one I realized half-assedly after posting. Maybe the whole Landmark/Milestone thing felt off to me because of this. For the many things I could fault the Academy for, over-machoism isn't one of them. In fact, actually, under-machoism is much more their weakness (where was the win for Scorsese's early masterpieces like Raging Bull? for example).
The truth is -- and this is where I really fucked up by posting the previous thought (which I refuse to pull even though I maybe regret) -- is that I resent the idea of some absolute gender spectrum we have to use to gauge stories, and yet I reacted with a distinctly and ridiculously bipartisan approach. It's like I'm tired of whining democrats and so I declared myself republican when I meant to declare myself independent. Oops.
I hate overly macho films and overly femmy films just about equally. I guess if really pressed, all things being equal I might be less interested in the overly feminine ones, since they're less likely to speak to something I can relate to. What with being a boy. Robin Bougie's right to call bullshit. For what it's worth, I kind of thought I was saying what he gets at -- films shouldn't ever call attention to themselves for the typecast or race/gender/sexuality of the filmmaker. If you tell me it's a movie for men, or a movie for women, or a movie for blacks, or a movie for gays, I will instantly be less inclined to see it.
Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron both make films that are often a little too sweaty and masculine for my tastes, and I think I just lashed out at what I saw as irony that a lady won for a film so unladylike. Everybody is right: I'm glad it wasn't a lady making another ladylike film, or a dude making another for-dudes picture. I'd prefer a less one-or-the-other film, but it's certainly more interesting to aim for the other extreme than to make a gender-stereotypical story. No question.
I pay so little attention to the Oscars that it's easy not to think about the types of films that win. And I'm kind of bored/done with the whole landmark/milestone thing. Used to be I couldn't look at the internet without seeing Avatar news. Now I can't look at it without seeing how earthshattering it is that a lady director won an Oscar. And I knee-jerked.
And so: the dumbest thing I could do if I hate the black-or-white man-or-woman way of viewing films is to just jump on the other side and start shouting. Which is apparently what I did. Sorry, internet.
In writing this I had another thought, though, more to the core of the issue for me (which, stupidly, I didn't address at all in my original post, ha). (It is, however, something I noted immediately after the ceremony, on Twitter. Why didn't I just keep my mouth shut after that?) The problem isn't that woman directors aren't winning enough awards; the problem is there aren't enough woman directors. In all of Hollywood, 1 in 82 is probably about the right ratio for lady directors to dudes, so for 1 in 82 Oscars to go to a lady -- that seems about right, statistically. What we need is a more diverse filmmaker base to choose from, not more affirmative action in our accolade-giving.
We seem to have a decent equilibrium of women-to-men when it comes to writing music, or novels, or to painting (we do have a deficit of women writing & directing plays, but that's not my battle today) -- why can't we get more of them behind a camera, writing or directing film? I take issue with the Milestone status of her award only because I feel people speak like we've had a breakthrough. We haven't had a breakthrough. We'll have a breakthrough when there are a third as many women as men making films, let alone half.
There. That's the real thorn in my side. That and bipartisan gender-views on film, though apparently it's easier to fall into that than I realized.
Okay. I'm still an ass, but at least I'm an ass who can back up when he's misspoke.
/rant.