Hustlers & The Oscars

Vanity Fair’s Mark Harris has a great take on why Jennifer Lopez got shut out of best supporting actress in the Academy Award nominations. According to him, Lopez did everything wrong.

“She dared to play a character who used her sexuality as a professional survival tool and didn’t regret it; she committed the unforgivable sin of being sympathetic and then not; she took her public image and spectacularly amplified and reworked it to suit a complicated character. That is not what Academy voters want from J. Lo. What they want is for her to scrub off her makeup and play a poor mother dying of something who tries to find someone to take care of her kids. They want a role that says, Look how serious I am. Look how willing I am to punish myself for you. That kind of self-abasement has always been something Academy voters love to see from actresses; even if we set aside the grim social implications of that kind of thinking, what remains is a disappointing limitation of vision. The Academy has never been good at looking at a performance like the one Lopez gives in Hustlers and understanding that it is as serious, committed, and carefully crafted as the kind of stuff it usually likes. Actors, of all people, should know better.”

Like what I do? Support my work! Buy my digital short story: THE TUMOR.