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One night a year I get to pick the prime-time television show in this household, a household that continues to bring down the "number of televisions per household" statistics. Tonight is that night, and I pick the Academy Awards. I love the Oscars. I understand that in the past week or so the question kept popping up as to why middle America should watch an award ceremony so out-of-touch with most Americans. Here is my answer.

Most Americans did not see the movies nominated. So? I did. Zillions of Americans read books by Nicholas Sparks and John Grisham. This does not mean that they should get the Booker Prize or be read in English literatures classes fifty years from now. I am glad that not all movies have as central goals to merely entertain. Some movies I could watch over and over, like Grease 2. Some movies, like Schindler's List, I saw once, but that was all I needed to see it.

The movies nominated have political agendas. Every creation meant for an audience has an agenda. The agenda may be personal or not easily categorized, but many works build on universal themes from a perspective not universally held. That is what makes these works memorable. Thinking of other Academy Awards shows, many "best pictures" had liberal political agendas. Perhaps this continuing occurrence seems notable now because of its dissonance with the political leanings of other parts of the country.

The movies nominated are manipulative. Every creation meant for an audience is meant to persuade or change someone's mind. To do this, whether in comedy or in advertising or in a blockbuster movie, the creator uses the assumptions of the audience and takes the audience somehwere unexpected.

All this aside, I do think it's odd that this awards ceremony has its own "agenda." What is with this "some movies are meant only for the big screen, not for DVD players" theme? And did Jake Gyllenhaal not seem to ask the audience to realize that he was just reading his lines off the teleprompter and that he was uncomfortable being the messenger of this theme? I thought that to prove this point, the "epic" montage probably should have stuck with Gone With the Wind and Ten Commandments. But Grease? I did see Grease on the big screen five times, but then I've seen it on the small screen probably 50 times since, and it's pretty much the same.

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One night a year I get to pick the prime-time television show in this household, a household that continues to bring down the "number of televisions per household" statistics. Tonight is that night, and I pick the Academy Awards. I love the Oscars. I understand that in the past week or so the question kept popping up as to why middle America should watch an award ceremony so out-of-touch with most Americans. Here is my answer.

Most Americans did not see the movies nominated. So? I did. Zillions of Americans read books by Nicholas Sparks and John Grisham. This does not mean that they should get the Booker Prize or be read in English literatures classes fifty years from now. I am glad that not all movies have as central goals to merely entertain. Some movies I could watch over and over, like Grease 2. Some movies, like Schindler's List, I saw once, but that was all I needed to see it.

The movies nominated have political agendas. Every creation meant for an audience has an agenda. The agenda may be personal or not easily categorized, but many works build on universal themes from a perspective not universally held. That is what makes these works memorable. Thinking of other Academy Awards shows, many "best pictures" had liberal political agendas. Perhaps this continuing occurrence seems notable now because of its dissonance with the political leanings of other parts of the country.

The movies nominated are manipulative. Every creation meant for an audience is meant to persuade or change someone's mind. To do this, whether in comedy or in advertising or in a blockbuster movie, the creator uses the assumptions of the audience and takes the audience somehwere unexpected.

All this aside, I do think it's odd that this awards ceremony has its own "agenda." What is with this "some movies are meant only for the big screen, not for DVD players" theme? And did Jake Gyllenhaal not seem to ask the audience to realize that he was just reading his lines off the teleprompter and that he was uncomfortable being the messenger of this theme? I thought that to prove this point, the "epic" montage probably should have stuck with Gone With the Wind and Ten Commandments. But Grease? I did see Grease on the big screen five times, but then I've seen it on the small screen probably 50 times since, and it's pretty much the same.

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