<incom> Meeson, 3rd World at The Oscars

[Soenke Zehle]

3rd World at The Oscars
by Andrea Meeson
<http://www.chimurenga.co.za/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=102>

It’s Oscar time again and I’ve booked the sofa, stocked up on tissues 
and popcorn and trawled the movie sites on the Web so I can be up on all 
the fluff and flora before the big night.

It’s particularly heartwarming to be an Oscar junkie here in the third 
world because for the second year running a South African film has 
received a nod from the Academy in the category: Best Foreign Language Film.

Last year we lapped up Leleti on Yesterday’s red carpet and this year 
the nomination of Tsotsi has given our collective hearts and minds a 
welcome boost. Politicians should take note of what the acknowledgement 
of an elite group of first world film industry types and the prospect of 
a golden statue can do for the national psyche. Whips up a batch of 
fervent nationalism faster than a round of Umshin’ wami.

Ignore the raw sewerage and running street battles in Khutsong, we’ve 
got Tsotsi! Forget the sordid saga of our struggle hero Jacob Zuma, 
we’ve got a tsotsi who’s redeemable. Perhaps a T-shirt is in order: 100% 
Tsotsi. That’s quite catching wouldn’t you agree? And puts Zuma's Zulus 
in their place.

Hell, we can even put our blonde accoutrement from Benoni on the 
backburner. Charlize came in handy when were desperate for an Oscar 
hopeful and she needed a white trash backdrop for her Hallmark moment, 
but the grit and grime and coal-fired sunsets of township life are 
just…well, more, like…real and moving and relevant, you know what I 
mean? Charlize is our home girl once a year if she’s on the list of 
nominees, but Tsotsi? It’s ours, clichés and all, from Kya Sands to 
Kliptown, ekasi, homebru-ed, 24/7!

Foreign clichés do seem to be cooking in the Academy’s kitchen this 
year. You can smell it in the tag lines of the nominated ‘third world’ 
appetizers: “In this world, redemption comes just once,” some 
disembodied voice booms from the bowels of Tsotsi-land. You can imagine 
those Academy industry types nodding in agreement…“you got one chance 
only buddy, mess it up and yer history.”

I’m not sure the tsotsis, some who manage to live as many lives as 
redemption has letters, or the evangelical types in the rather big 
business of re-redeeming such souls would agree, but hey, I guess it 
adds to the keep it foreign flavour. Rather more savoury to the 
Hollywood palate is a black man redeemed behind bars than ‘making 
trouble’ on the streets.

Another telling tag line is from Tsotsi’s rival nominee, Paradise Now, a 
film that goes very bravely, but rather too briefly into the psyche of a 
couple of Palestinian suicide bombers. It goes something like: “from the 
most unexpected place comes a bold new call for peace.”

Three guesses whose kitchen that was cooked up in.

Can we dispense with these platitudes and just admit that the majority 
of Palestinians living under occupation desire and have been working for 
peace for decades so the call is neither bold nor new, nor does it come 
from an unexpected place?

‘No…no, sorry,’ the industry types clamour, ‘the Oscar recipe calls for 
a healthy dose of Hollywood. We’ve got the Zionist lobby on our backs 
already and let’s face it, these are A-rabs we’re talking about—peace is 
not in their vocabulary!’

Perhaps the most fetching of tag lines belongs to the out in Africa 
saga, The Constant Gardener, the last in the ‘third’ world trilogy to be 
tipped for an award—for the actress Rachel Weisz (best female support), 
rather than the film (set in Kenya) itself.

Here it goes: “Love. At any cost?”

Well that just says it all doesn’t it? Short, sharp, to the point. No 
need for context really.

No need for this film really. A fine example of the worst of the 
simpering Merchant Ivory genre that convinced many of us that colonial 
types and their charity are neither remotely interesting nor worthy of 
one-and-half hours of big screen time.

The Constant Gardener takes any thrill out of what was not one of John 
Le Carre’s best thrillers. Vapid characters , liberal doses of Africa 
cliché—starving, helpless, poverty-stricken, Aids-ridden people, who 
make colourful backdrops and are suspicious in their inability to 
display anything but suspicious behaviour. Oh, but do include plenty of 
those shots of African sunsets and breathtaking scenery, complete with 
soaring background vocals. Those Africans do background so well don't they?

And so do they do it at the Oscars. And so have we joined them in their 
revelry. Three cheers for the third world. We’ve hit the big time - a 
bit short on integrity but with tag lines intact.