LaLa Moonlight

Whether by design or by mishap, it was meant to be. The grand finale of the uber glitzy and prestigious 89th Academy Awards simply tanked. Who would have thought that on the biggest night, on the biggest stage with the biggest movie award of the global entertainment industry such a screwup would had taken place? No one.

The Oscars represent the best TV production night on the planet, bar none. Even for someone as ignorant of the entertainment production business as me, that much is apparent. The expectations for a flawless production from beginning to end and a show intended to draw in millions of viewers worldwide are set somewhere close to the exosphere. We watch the Oscars because it’s the Oscars. Yes, it’s over three hours of self-indulgent glamour over which at some point (or several) one is wondering when the darn thing is going to end. But the whole spectacle is so rapturing that most of us suffer whatever length of time it demands. This is especially true when the array of movies presented is like the one of the 89th edition of the Awards.

Of course that major issues always happen in these shows. Nothing is perfectly flawless on live TV or performance of any sort. However, the reason we seldom know about it is because the damage control posse (that’s not its real name) is hard at work preempting PR disasters behind the scenes. The Hollywood elite has a reputation to maintain and this is especially true of its biggest ceremony. #Tinsel.

Honestly, I feel for the DCP. Nothing could have prepared them for it last night. I and venture to say that if somebody is prepared on nights like last night it’s the DCP. They didn’t even see it coming. No one did and for a couple of minutes the LaLa Land crowd went really LaLa. But then time stopped and, unbelievably, the already awarded Best Movie Award was handed over from an almost entirely white crew full of dreams in LaLa Land to an almost entirely black crew stricken by Moonlight.

None of it should have happened. Not this way. Make no mistake, the Academy made the right choice in selecting the Best Movie of the Year. Whether you’re happy or disappointed is beside the point. The movie that needed to win, won. And that movie was Moonlight. Let me also say while we’re at it that if you happen to be white and find yourself in septic shock, wondering how this could have happened, well frankly, my dear, we don’t give. Allow me end the sentence right there.

The truth is that racial issues are very much alive and are not going to go away anytime soon. Yes, we have a lot of work to do regarding racial reconciliation in this country. If anything, in its awards the Academy acknowledged as much last night. Not too long after Oscarsgate went down, a few memes started floating in the cyberspace insinuating that the real name on the card for Best Actor was Denzel. That’s probably taking it too far, but one still wonders. #StuffHappens

Let’s come back to you, my dear white reader, among the myriad of readers reading this (#wishfulthinking). Had I been white like you, I’d probably relate to the sense of “loss”. But again, I really don’t care about your sense of loss. You’ve won at this thing for 88 straight years. Cut us brown and black folk some slack. We won the Best Movie and we won it at what has traditionally being the whitest awards in the history of awards.

And yet, Moonlight was robbed last night. It was robbed of its deserved spotlight, of its once in a lifetime moment, of its making history without scandal. It deserved to own that stage without chaperones, but it didn’t. The Oscar was embarrassingly handed over in an arrested and confusing atmosphere. Obviously, the newfound losers celebrated the dumbfounded winners. There was still grace in the handoff. Humility in victory. Grace in defeat. Perhaps in some sort of strange way LaLa Land still won that award. I know that in the hearts and minds of many (of my own white friends) that is still the case.

Wouldn’t it have been amazing if the Moonlight crew had turn that seemingly ruined moment for both parties, with the one loser and the other winner, into a superlative victory for both? #ButIDigress. This was Moonlight’s moment and nothing else was required than to seize what was left of it.

No matter how you cut it, the beautiful irony of #Oscarsgate is this: The make belief of Hollywood and the blunt reality of the Black American experience were forever joined last night in such a way that, as someone has already aptly put it elsewhere, “if they made a movie about it no one would believe it.” #ItWasMeantToBe