Oscar

Babylon
José Miguel de la Viuda Sainz

I don't know if you have read Kenneth Anger's book "Hollywood Babylon". I
have. I own the Tusquets edition, with the edges in grey dots. I don't know if you
have seen the movie "Babylon" by Damien Chazelle. I have. I confess that I did not
waste my time, despite the fact that the last quarter of an hour is not needed. The
performances of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie are well above average and the
movie has two magical moments. I left the theatre with the conviction that this love
ode to the magic of cinema was designed to win Oscars, but what would be my
surprise when I found out that it was not nominated for best ilm.
I discussed it with my son Diego and we came to the conclusion that the
movie was too politically incorrect so we thought about doing a study on the
political correctness of the movies that have won the Oscar for best ilm. The
question was: how? Because we weren't going to see the thirty (at least) or forty
movies on the list of Oscar winners (that we have not seen yet) to made our minds.
We decided to use an impartial medium. Unbiased in a Figurative Sense, But
Unbiased: The Internet Movie Database (iMDB) Parental Guide. Because it is
enough for someone to put a negative comment to trigger the algorithms and the
movie gets an orange or red card (here the yellow ones do not count). Something
like the diamonds that used to display on Spanish television when I was a child
(one above 14 years, 2 above 18) or the classi ication of ecclesiastical censorship:
1: All audiences
2: Young people (yes, the border between young people and children or
between young people and older people was not clear)
3: Adults
3R: Adults with Objections (reserved for people with solid moral formation)
4: Seriously dangerous (I wonder, dangerous for what? or for whom?

The iMDB (the movie bible) has ive criteria to guide parents on whether or
not it is advisable to take their children to see a certain movie:
• Sex & Nudity
• Violence & Gore
• Profanity
• Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking
• Frightening & Intense Scenes

And we got to work, assigning a zero "none" a one to "mild" a two to

"moderate" and a three to "severe", and then we calculated the average. The results
are, to say the least, curious. Attention, the dates are those of the year of release of
the movie, not the dates of the Oscars ceremony.

With the exception of the original version of "All Quiet in the Western Front"
(1.8), Best Picture Oscar-winning ilms rarely exceed an average of 1.2 until 1969,
when "Midnight Cowboy" breaks the canons with a "brutal" 1.8: two in everything
except alcohol, tobacco and drugs with one. From there, the "un-appropriated"
goes wild and culminates with 2.2 of "The Deer Hunter", 3 in violence, profanity
and frightening scenes. It is clear that someone must have given them a call
because the "hardness" falls sharply until hitting bottom with the most suitable for
all audiences "Chariots of Fire" (1981) that reaches 0.4 (Eric Lidell's companions of
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 the XV of Scotland said that he was a very boring guy). Oliver Stone put things in
his place in 1986 with "Platoon" (2.4) and then a drop again with "Driving Miss
Daisy" (0.6, 1989). "Schlinder's list" marks the maximum (2.6) with three in sex,
violence and frightening scenes (if a movie on the list, I don't remember which one,
got a one because a Nazi lag appears, the three falls short). Each "hard" movie is
followed by a few "soft" ones until the next "hard" ones: "American Beauty", "The
Departed" and "12 Years a Slave". The compensation cycle is lagrant. As if they
were afraid of "losing the family audience" (the phrase is taken from "All that jazz").
In short: political correctness rules.

The analysis of the results in each criterion also has its point:

Sex and nudity makes its triumphant entry at the Oscars in 1969 with
Midnight Cowboy. Thirty-three years after the nude of Hedy Lamarr (the inventor
of Wi-Fi) in "Ectasy". The level goes up to 3 with "Schlinder's List" and has ranged
from one to three in the last ten years.

Violence: Always present. Decreases in times of war (World War II, Korea,
Vietnam), to rise and remain stable.

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 Profanity: Rather contained until 1975 "someone lew over the Cuckoo's
nest", ive years after the irst "fuck": MASH. Later, I would say that with the
obligatory ups and downs, constantly increasing.

Alcohol, tobacco and drugs: This is to laugh at. There are only seven ilms,
seven, with zero (including "Gladiator" and excluding "Chariots of Fire", since the
deans, or whatever they are called from "Caius College" have a port. Or maybe a
Sherry! And only one with three: "The Lost Weekend" a 1953 ilm about an
alcoholic writer. Hollywood is into alcohol and drugs... in moderation.

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 Frightening or intense scenes: Things are increasing over time, although it
seems that in recent years they have calmed down. It must be the "wokeism":

And Babylon? Well, severe in everything. Very severe. So it doesn't surprise

me that it has passed unnoticed.