In the most notorious snafu in Oscars history, the wrong film- "La La Land"- was announced by presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty (reunited for the 50th anniversary of "Bonnie and Clyde") as the winner of the Best Picture. However, within minutes, the triumphant producers had to hand the award over to the makers of "Moonlight", which was the official winner. Beatty and Dunaway were not to blame- they had been handed the envelope for Best Actress, which had just been given to Emma Stone for "La La Land". Confused, Dunaway announced the winner was "La La Land". The debacle left a group of incredulous people on stage even while the producers of "La La Land" graciously handed over the award to the "Moonlight" team. The finale looked like a scene from "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".
The ceremony itself was over-produced and over-long with Jimmy Kimmel as less-than-satisfactory host. He turned the entire event into a cheap comedy segment from one of his late-night shows with cringe-inducing bits that were both elaborate and unfunny. They ranged from literally parachuting donuts onto the audience to bringing in a busload of incredulous tourists into the auditorium. The latter was a one-minute joke stretched to interminable lengths as we watched the tourists ask the stars for autographs! Meanwhile, political punditry was predictably in vogue with many snipes at President Trump, whose obsession for media attention is considered a mental illness by opponents and an amusing eccentricity by his supporters, If Kimmel and company really wanted to get under the president's skin, they would have refrained from mentioning his name at all. Besides, nobody tunes into the show for political advice. There was an offensive comedy segment in which stars read actual offensive Tweets about themselves. More ridiculous was the segment that paid tribute to artists we lost over the last year. As usual, there were bizarre exclusions including director Guy Hamilton and Oscar nominee Robert Vaughn, to name just two. Meanwhile, the segment featured countless people the public never even heard of. With all the time wasted on comedy skits, couldn't they have extended this segment another couple of minutes to include more artists? The Best Song nominees were mostly duds and the banter between presenters was dreadful. On the up side there were some genuinely inspiring acceptance speeches and it was great to see so many films about people of color being honored. It had been a very fine year for movies but this Oscar telecast was one of the worst. The only upside is that during the Best Picture confusion, Kimmel was heard to promise that he won't be back as host. Let's hope it's a promise that is kept.
Everyone agrees
that the 1960s was an era of great social change. So much was happening on so
many different cultural and political fronts: the news was filled with wars and
rumors of war, riots and assassinations.
A new wave of artists and writers were on the scene, and new sounds in
the air and over the airwaves. On the other hand, there was television. In
1961, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, asserted
confidently that any intelligent person could “ sit down in front
of your television set when your station goes on the air... and keep your eyes
glued to that set until the station signs off, (and) I can assure you that you
will observe a vast wasteland.â€
Others agreed with Minow’s critique, TV was indeed a cultural and intellectual
wasteland, and in the opinion of many would remain so for much of the decade
and beyond.
I wasn’t one of
those people. And while I never thought about it back then (I was just a little
kid), later when I had time to reflect, I realized that, far from being a
complete waste of my time, growing up
watching 1960s television had, in fact, been a great gift to my life. Granted,
much of the programming back then, as today, was little more than junk food for
the mind. Still, stuffed amid the junk were some real treasures, ones that
nourished both the mind and the soul. I believe one of these was the Daniel
Boone show, which ran on NBC
from 1964 to 1970. Starring Fess Parker(1924-2010)
in the lead role, the series featured the adventures of legendary frontiersman
Daniel Boone. Others cast members included Patricia Blair as Daniel’s wife,
Rebecca, Darby Hinton as his young son, Israel, and Ed Ames as his, pardon the
expression, “boon companion†Mingo.
Every week viewers
could see Dan involved in fighting the British, making peace with the Indians,
or doing battle with moral wrongdoers. Each show ended usually on a high-note,
with friends and family united and enemies’ vanquished. All and all, not unlike
a lot of other “family shows†of the era. Except this one was a little
different. To begin with, the character of Boone as Parker portrayed him,
wasn’t exactly your typical John Ford or Howard Hawks western hero. While he
possessed all the traditional qualities of the type (courage, resourcefulness,
personal honesty and physical strength), the creators of the show added
something to the stock: human compassion. For while Dan was as quick with his
fists as he was his flintlock, ready for a fight at the drop of a coonskin cap,
he was just as quick to turn the other cheek and offer forgiveness to a former
foe. What’s more, he went out of his way to help others, especially those
weaker and more vulnerable than himself.
In one episode titled Hero’s Welcome, which
first aired in 1968, one of his old friends, a man named Simon Jarvis, has
fallen on hard times. Simon, a former war hero, suffers a fall from grace when
he is accused of cowardice in a later battle against the Choctaw Indians.
Taking solace in alcohol, Simon loses both his family and self-respect. By the
time Dan finds him, he has been reduced to lying in a half-fetal position on
the floor, suffering from what seems to be a form of PTSD. Dan slowly nurses
him back to health, doing everything from shaving him when he’s too weak to
hold a razor, to gently tucking him in bed at night. He even teaches him a
soothing mantra to say to himself when the night terrors are upon him. In
addition to helping Simon, Dan forcefully defends the honor of his good friend
Mingo, who is half Cherokee, against the attacks of a group of racist bullies,
the same group who unjustly accuse Simon of cowardice. Training his long rifle
on them, he says quietly, “he’s as good as any man here.†That one line,
perhaps as much as any, embodies the attitude of the show.
Add to this the
fact that Daniel and Rebecca’s marriage was not your usual “father knows bestâ€
variety. Dan looked to his wife for help and advice, trusted her implicitly in
all matters and was immensely proud of her independent spirit. Together, they
shared equal authority and responsibility in raising their children.
And while none of this may seem especially earth shattering
to us today, we must remember that back in the 1960s ideas about marriage, race
and masculinity had changed little in the country in two hundred years. Nowhere
was this truer than the part I grew up in, the rural South. Fables of
friendship, racial tolerance and equality between the sexes that Daniel Boone showcased were gentle and
understated, but no less real and powerful for that. The moral and ethical
lessons I learned sitting in front of our little black and white set each week,
in an era of violence and social unrest, never left me. Instead, they helped
shape and inform my adult worldview, and, I dare say, the view of others;
little boys all over America, little girls too, who loved both Fess Parker and
the icon he portrayed. If didn’t
matter so much that the stories were largely the fanciful creations of TV
script writers. What mattered were the ideals and values those writers took as
their common theme each week. Back then, we seemed to be a nation reaching for
something more than mere wealth and power alone could define, and these stories
of civic charity and social inclusiveness, told in the guise of an adventure
tale, taught us that. Fess Parker taught us that. We learn to put away childish
things when we grow up. However, there are certain lessons we should never
forget.
Joe
Elliott is an educator and writer who lives in Asheville, North Carolina
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