Oscars are for the Holocaust

Who isn't talking about the fact that Kate Winslet finally got the Oscar she deserved five nominations ago.
Life imitates art as she won it for playing the role in the Holocaust film The Reader... well, post-Holocaust film really. I haven't seen it, so I really cannot comment on her acting in it.
But throughout award season there have been references to her performance on Ricky Gervais' show "Extras" in which she satirises herself - saying that she's doing a Holocaust movie in order to finally get the Oscar the whole world says she should have.

For your viewing pleasure:

Schindler's bloody List indeed.

In any event, good on Winslet, I don't know if this is the movie in which she should have won, but she should have won long ago.
Her craft as an actress has always been beyond superb.

That's what the Oscars are about you know.
The craft of the film - that's why I'm never surprised when the most conventional and conformist movies get nominated and win.
It's kind of why I haven't seen most of the Oscar nominated movies - they're all so conventional and conformist.

The only categories in which truly artistic films - that is, films whose craft are not of the "classical" British or Hollywood made - have a chance at winning an academy award are the Animation features (both long and short) and the foreign language film.
Probably the most arbitrary category in existence!
Because a "foreign language" is a genre.
Really.
It's not.

As most of you know, Waltz with Bashir didn't win the foreign language film category.
I was rooting for it.
But I didn't think it would win.
My own theory is that it didn't win because it was too avant-garde. And the old men and women of the academy, recalling the bygone days of the 50's, 60's and yes, maybe even 70's, could probably not let themselves give an academy award to a cartoon.

Unlike some paranoiacs the Academy did not deny Israel an Oscar because they're anti-Zionst. *snort* not bloody likely.
Bradely Burston, the Ha'aretz English Edition columnist who writes about Israel from the Jewish-American perspective (I can only assume) wrote a very negative column about the Oscars and Jewish portrayal titled Winslet, "Waltz", and how Hollywood likes its Jews:

Hollywood knows exactly how it likes its Jews: Victims. Civilian victims. Targets of genocide. None of this Goliath stuff. None of these pre-emptive, disproportionate, morally amorphous behaviours.

I suppose one shouldn't mention the latest "Holocaust" movie Defiance?
Never mind.
Burston's point is that the Israeli narrative doesn't sit well with the Hollywood ilk.
Because Israelis are and I quote:

Israelis are complicated, angry, unhappy, family-oriented, insular, often flawed human-beings.
Perhaps, in the Hollywood context, the problem with these Israelis, is that they are not identifiable as Jews at all

There.
That's the point.
Israelis, in the classical and historical sense are not really Jews.
We are not wanderers, we are parochial, we are not rootless, we are a cohesive nation (as much as a "nation" of that kind exists) and we are no longer persecuted.
Merely surrounded by enemies.
No, Israelis are not classically identifiable as Jews - that is probably why the Jewish Diaspora is in two minds about Israel - Look at what the Jewish people have become out of the ashes of the Holocaust.
What indeed.

Let's ignore the fact that a bunch of Israelis come from places not even touched or affected by the Holocaust - wouldn't want to disrupt the meta-narrative of Israel's existence.

So because Bashir was about a wholly Israeli experience, with it's avant-garde package of docu-drama quasi-psychological dream-hallucinations and real life footage flashbacks... it didn't win.

As far as I can recall, there is nothing specifically "Jewish" about Waltz with Bashir except that snippet in which the Holocaust is used in an attempt to colour the actions and reactions of the protagonist.
Unsuccessfully I might add.
The only thing the mentioning of the Holocaust does in the movie is bring to mind that Israel commits war crimes and crimes against humanity and that the Holocaust cannot be removed from Israeli conciousness by virtue of it being the worst and last time, Jews were victimised.

But Israeli Jews consider themselves the "real" Jews. And with it comes the double-think.
We are no longer the weak effeminate victims, we are macho land workers etc.
At the same time we are surrounded by enemies who only want to shove us into the sea and we must not allow this - we have the biggest weapons and the biggest allies - *smash-smash-smash*.
Not to mention the over-all disdain a lot of Israeli Jews have towards Diaspora Jews: the Jews who support Israel but don't come to live here are cowards and those who don't support Israel are self-hating Jews who when the going gets tough will probably flock here in droves.

I've been accused of being naive, you know, because I'm "enamoured" of the Palestinians.
I'm not enamoured with anyone.
Is it too much to ask that everyone be allowed to live in dignity and self-determination?
That the recognition of wrongs be made official?

Waltz with Bashir isn't about those things.
It's about the cognitive dissonance of Israeli soldiers raised in a culture of overt masculinity that relies on reliving and relearning the victims that we are.

In the words of Kate Winslet "We get it. It was grim. Move on".
Moving on doesn't mean forgetting or putting aside - anyone who has been through a traumatic event knows this - it does mean that it doesn't overshadow and colour your entire life all the time.
It also means that we will be able to empathise with those are currently being victimised without believing that we suffered more and are thus always oppressed.

It's something to look forward to.