Back By Popular Demand

I was crushed when Amy Adams wasn't named Best Actress for her smart, colorful and surefooted portrayal of Sydney Prosser in "American Hustle" during Sunday night's Oscar telecast. But even if the Academy was too short-sighted to recognize the actress's genius, they ought to thank her for bringing sexy back to the red carpet without deploying any of the usual cheap tricks.

It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment when stripper-chic déshabillé sauntered out of the clubs and into broad daylight, but after trying to un-see what my disbelieving eyes had  seen on one too many red carpets, awards shows and even at my local mall for the past several years, I finally reconciled myself to the fact that women had bought into the lie that more is more. That the only thing more beautiful than the female form in it's natural state-- as celebrated by visual artists for millennia-- was the female form as reconfigured by Spanx, Wonder Bras, silicone, breast implants, botox and plastic surgery. And that absent having anything important to say, women could always shake their asses to attract attention and move some merchandise.

And man, has that strategy worked.



After J-Lo backed that thang up on Pitbull at the American Music Awards in 2011, it was only a matter of time before American Idol came a knockin' to recruit her as a judge. Had Anja Rubik not worn a gown which revealed exactly where her hip bone connected to her thigh bone for the Met Gala in 2012, I seriously doubt that I'd remember her name today.



When Miley Cyrus showed the world what she was twerkin' with at the VMA's in 2013, images of a wholesome Hannah Montana promptly tumbled from our collective consciousness and kick started her new career.

And in spite of my being naive enough to think "Et tu, Queen Bee?" after Blue Ivy's mommy left precious little to our imaginations during her big show opener at the Grammy Awards this year, Beyoncé's latest album had just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart without benefit of a single pre-sale announcement. 

And then came Adams-- bucking the trend and styled to perfection in "American Hustle" by the film's costume designer Michael Wilkinson.

Together, the duo accomplished the seemingly impossible by channeling the '70s in all of its sartorial splendor without making the period dress look as clownish, cheap and over-the-top (bell bottoms, Applejacks and marshmallow platforms anyone?) as those of us who actually lived through the era can attest.

No doubt, getting to work with an actress whose intelligence is her calling card, though not so much that it sublimates her sexuality, was an excellent start for Wilkinson. But his background in theatre, opera and ballet costume design obviously honed his talent for delivering the razzle-dazzle with sophistication and restraint.



Who, after all, but a master craftsman who truly loves and respects women could make plunging necklines, thigh-high slits and sheer fabrics that afford peek-a-boo glimpses of an unadulterated bust line (which, in Adams' case, was more demure than in-your-face) look positively elegant as opposed to trashy? Which is not to say that Wilkinson couldn't go there when necessary. Jennifer Lawrence (who I believe deserved a win in the Best Supporting Actress category, as did Wilkinson for Costume Design) played a character in "American Hustle," for example, whose consistently too-tight & too-shiny wardrobe perfectly mirrored her emotional instability as well as the string of poor choices she'd made in her life.



Ultimately, a very thin line separated Adams' character from Lawrence's, but the distinction was a great lesson in how too much of a good thing is rarely a good idea where timeless style is concerned. And, let's face it, just as sure as we love looking back on pictures screen idols from 50 years ago, so too shall future generations revisit images of pictures today's super novas and either think "Wow!"

...or "What was the hell she thinking?!"

Whether the costumes from "American Hustle" inspired women to reconsider what is required of them to bring drama and sex-appeal to the red carpet, or the timing was sheer coincidence, I was happy to see that the tide had seemingly turned during this year's Oscars. In fact, with one exception, I was not horrified by a single look all night. Actually, make that two now that I remember the woman who I mistook for a man all night until one of the girlfriends I was watching the Academy Awards with did a goggle search to settle the dispute. On second thought, make that three exceptions as I also consider the very pregnant actress whose beaded green gown accented way too much information.

But I digress...

Overall, I was charmed by the return to glamour.



The white coats on gentleman, and ruby red lips on ladies.

 The delicate heels and understated accessories.



The mix of slightly messy chignons, flowing waves and darling pixie cuts.



 The billowing skirts, sweeping scarves and delicate trains.

The disciplined structure, tailoring and draping of rich textiles in jewel tones, miles of tulle and nude dressing.

Gaga looked every inch the lady in a pale lavender/pink strapless column with reflective deco accents-- more like a muse to the French couturier Erté, in fact, than her typically edgy, ironic self.

And even babies on board looked more refined than ever before.

Honorable mentions to silver belles Constance Leto and Mary Kathleen McConaughey who not only threatened to steal the show from their Oscar winning sons (Jared and Matthew), but provided a beautiful contrast to all the nipping & tucking, slicing & dicing, filling & buffing that made some of the more mature screen legends in attendance practically unrecognizable to their lifelong fans. Kudos to both ladies for knowing that too much plastic surgery not only fails to make the patient look younger, but can sometimes accelerate the aging process as it telegraphs ones fear of growing older to even the most untrained eye.

And then there was the undisputed belle of the ball, Lupita Nyong'o wearing a silk gorgette soleil pleated Prada gown in a shade of cerulean blue that the actress said reminded her of "the sky in Nairobi," where she was raised.

Like Adams, Nyong'o is an actress whose brains trump her considerable beauty. Moreover, she always has something meaningful to say-- whether paying tribute to the spirit of Patsy, the character she portrayed in "12 Years a Slave," during an acceptance speech that reduced both fans and colleagues to tears, or confessing how she'd once enjoyed "the seduction of inadequacy" as a young girl to a group of women at a pre-Oscar luncheon.

http://www.upworthy.com/oscar-winner-lupita-nyongos-speech-on-beauty-that-left-an-entire-audience-speechless

 And yet, for all of her considerable gifts, it was apparently Nyong'o's poise and aristocratic bearing that most charmed everyone-- prompting red carpet watchers to describe her first and foremost as princess-like and regal.

It's any one's guess whether the trend started by Adams and upheld so effortlessly by Nyong'o can be sustained. For one thing, they are both exceptional women in an industry that celebrates sameness. And the fickle winds of fashion are constantly shifting. But even if the magic does not last, what a pleasure it has been to be reminded that less is always more. That there is no substitute for natural beauty. And that if you don't have anything worthwhile to contribute, it is far better to be an observer than do whatever it takes to rock the mike.

But now that ladylike dressing is back by popular demand, I think the Academy would do well to encourage a complimentary tradition to keep the comeback alive at The Oscars.



Legend has it that there used to be men who would instinctively rush to the aid of damsels in distress, unasked, to extend a hand if he saw her getting tangled up in the skirts of her ball gown or tottering on too-high heels before disaster struck. I believe they were called gentlemen... or Frenchmen.


But as Jennifer Lawrence taught us at last year's Academy Awards, and again this year as she took a tumble in the car park, such men are apparently in very short supply in Hollywood. So I think the Academy should formalize the position and hire an army of escorts to assist actresses when they are at their most vulnerable: as they alight from limousines, navigate rain-soaked receiving lines for photo-ops and ascend slick staircases to receive their awards? It would be a great look for the modern man, deeply appreciated by women in need and, with any luck, the trend might even catch on far from Tinsel Town... at a mall near you!

Hollywood's Downward Dogma

Like all profound lessons, the first one my yoga teacher Kquvien taught me was simple.  

In an effort to make her students more mindful of how we carried ourselves in and out of the studio, Kquvien demonstrated how posture could inform our mental outlooks for better or worse. Slumped shoulders, concave chests and downcast eyes, she said, would reinforce feeling of depression, defeat and pessimism. Whereas heads held high, raised sternums, shoulders pinned back and gazes trained at eye level or above would bolster feeling of well-being, courage and optimism. 

Six years later, these stark contrasts still serve as all the encouragement I need to turn my thinking around whenever an emotional setback threatens to alter my physicality. In fact, second to my mother’s relentless insistence to “stand up straight” throughout a very awkward adolescence, Kquvien’s insights remain the greatest influence on my posture today. But this heightened awareness has also sensitized me to a disturbing trend in Hollywood that’s been gaining steam and stands an excellent chance of being rewarded at tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony. 

When I chose to see “12 Years a Slave” last year, it was with a great deal of trepidation. After watching films like “The Butler,” “The Help,”, “Precious” and “Monster’s Ball” I’d had enough of the downward dogma that sees to be a prerequisite for telling stories about African American men and women. I’d lost my appetite for seeing a lion of a man like Forrest Whittaker don a pair of white gloves and bow under the unbearable weight of civil injustice. If I never had to witness a goddess like Viola Davis fasten a starched white apron about her trim waist again-- knowing this would be her only defense against the slings and arrows of racial apartheid and profound ignorance-- good riddance. And I most certainly would not mourn the loss were someone to tell me that Mo’Nique’s dramatization of a mommy-gone-mad on steroids was to be my first and last taste of such toxic medicine.

For the record, I respect any artist’s right to tell stories that reveal ugly truths about the human condition. Feature films do not have to be wrapped in rainbows (to borrow Zora Neale Hurston’s exquisite metaphor) to attract my attention and command my respect. But when the characterizations of people who look exactly like me are so far-fetched and extreme that they border on caricature, the filmmaker is guaranteed to lose my trust. Likewise, given the Academy’s apparently insatiable appetite for portrayals of black people who are depraved, depressed, oppressed, suppressed, pathological, pathetic, self-hating and/or self-destructive, the cynic in me now wonders if the shortest route between an actor (of color) and an Oscar might not be to play someone who possesses one or all of the above traits.

To put it very mildly, I was not a fan of “12 Years a Slave.” The film felt more like pornography to me than a work of art. And though the director, Steve McQueen, succeeded in crafting a film that would shock, excite and titillate his audiences, the film neither taught me anything I didn’t already know about the peculiar institution, nor gave me any insights on Solomon Northrup-- a real life character who was free-born in 1808 then kidnapped and sold into slavery when he was 33 years old. To the contrary, under McQueen’s heavy handed direction, slow-motion examination of whippings, torture and degradation and one particularly gruesome sequence in which Solomon literally exorcises his demons upon the person of a female slave named Patsy-- I was left feeling more brutalized than enlightened. Feeling, I imagine, how the jury must have felt by the end of the Rodney King trial over 20 years ago.

Early in the process of that infamous court case, the defense attorneys wisely theorized that the surest way to eliminate any empathy for King’s suffering would be to show the jury the videotape of his savage beating at the hands of the LAPD repeatedly. The gamble worked, because though it seems counter intuitive one of the best ways to desensitize an objective party to the pain and suffering of another human being is to force feed images of the victim being brutalized. At some point, King evidently became more of a receptacle for punishment in the mind's of the jurors than a living, breathing man who deserved service, respect and equal protection under the law. The kind of man, for example, who might remind a juror of a beloved big brother, or favorite uncle or kind-hearted neighbor. The takeaway for me was that to know a man is to know his humanity: and absent the former, the latter is an impossibility.

For all the chest-beating, tears, drama and accolades that Northup’s story has generated, I left “12 Years a Slave” feeling  like I knew everything about the slave and nothing about the man. And in order to love, respect or truly care about anyone, we must know them in all of their dimensions. Thus, it will feel like a very hollow victory to me if McQueen’s picture wins any of the nine Oscars for which it has been nominated because without knowing who Solomon Northrop was how can we expect the story of his life to resonate beyond the pomp of tonight’s broadcast? And if it does not resonate and change minds, then what what was the point?

Ironically, the one film I saw in 2013 that introduced me to a character with whom I had very little familiarity in real life, yet left me with the kind of profound understanding that will inform my thinking about a sub-section of young black men for the rest of my life was completely ignored by the Academy. In fact, if you have not already seen “Fruitvale Station” by first time feature film director Ryan Coogler, I recommend you rent it and watch it in place of the Oscars if you want to have a truly meaningful and lasting experience in front of your TV tonight.

“Fruitvale Station” chronicles the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who was killed in cold blood by BART officers at San Francisco’s Fruitvale subway station on New Year’s Day in 2009. In his masterpiece of a film, Coogler manages to render Grant with respect, love and attention to the kind of detail needed to bring two-dimensional characters to life. The possibility of falling in love and having our hearts broken is what makes cinema a worthwhile endeavor. And it takes a skilled craftsman to get viewers to willingly walk that razor’s edge between hope and despair without feeling like we’ve been conned, tricked or condescended to when the lights come up at the conclusion of the piece.

As a screenwriter and director, Coogler has already distinguished himself as such a storyteller. The 27-year-old has enough courage and respect for his audience to tell us the whole truth about his protagonist-- without need to manipulate, sugarcoat or obscure the truth. Thus, we get to see Grant as both an unfaithful and loving partner to the mother of his child. We watch him code-switch from happy-go-lucky kid who can chat up a customer in need of a good recipe for fried fish at the high-end foodie emporium from which he was recently fired, to a desperado whose efforts to get his old job back turn menacing. 

Grant served time in prison for dealing drugs, but it was impossible to judge the morality of his decisions once we were left to reconcile the reality of his life (which afforded him as many opportunities as second chances-- which is to say zero) with that of a son, brother and father who wanted to provide for his family in spite of having no access to a legitimate revenue stream.  And in the most touching scene of the film, we watch an utterly dead-eyed Grant respond to the taunts of a fellow inmate in kind one moment, before getting a glimpse of the frightened little boy who only wants a hug from his mother as she retreats from the Visiting Room where he is incarcerated without so much as a backwards glance.

Again, I knew very little about the ins and outs of lives like Oscar Grant’s before seeing “Fruitvale Station,” and am ashamed to admit that I had little to no compassion for how boys and men like him might wind up making bad decisions that can ruin lives and destroy entire communities. In Coogler’s capable hands, however, not only was it unthinkable to judge Grant, but I was hard pressed to rationalize how I might have made different choices in my life had I been born into Grant’s circumstances. In other words, once I got to know him I loved him. And once I loved and knew where he was coming from, how could I not root for him?

Thanks also to Michael B. Jordan’s nuanced, layered and unadorned portrayal of Grant, I immediately recognized his humanity, his swagger, his family and the depth of love that makes young men like him the favorite uncle: the one who is always accused of getting his little nieces and nephews “all riled up before bedtime” owing to the excitement he can generate in their tiny hearts just by being proximate to them. That Jordan is the kind of actor who you can actually see thinking was icing on the cake.

How the Academy might have overlooked a diamond like “Fruitvale Station” while heaping praise on “12 Years a Slave” is a conundrum that has me more excited about the red carpet portion of tonight’s ceremony that the actual awards. But even if my worst fears are realized, I already know that Kquvien’s voice will ring in my ears-- reminding me to keep my head up, shoulders back and gaze high-- all the while praying that Hollywood’s romance with the downward dogma of the African American experience is just a passing fancy whose time has finally come and gone.