Felix and Oscar(s)

     An odd couple to be sure, that original clash of stereotypes in Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau that made me wonder, what happened to the word "stereo?"  But old pairings and phrases aside, something else quite old and stereotyped just happened a few weeks ago (and by now likely forgotten)...the Oscars.  It had been well over a decade since my wife and I viewed any such sort of  "awards" show, especially those where a media industry pats itself on the back and makes a production of praising its own people...the Emmys, the Grammys, the Oscars (and those are just in the US for the practice has now spread across the world).  A quick peek at the BAFTA winners showed results almost opposite those of the Oscars.  How could that be?  And who exactly gets to vote anyway?   Quartz had this to say about the mysterious process of who the voting members are who decide who will or won't get an award from the "academy:" ...a 2012 investigation by the Los Angeles Times determined that 94% of Academy members were white.  Black filmmakers and actors made up just 2% of the membership; Latinos, less than that.  The group was about 77% male and also skewed older, with a median age of 62 years old.  Only 14% of members were younger than 50.  Of course there's money involved, said Business Insider, enough to offset the costs the studios spend to lobby for their films and casts; and if such lobbying sounds familiar, one has to ask just how much influence does politics play in each year's awards?  The OscarsSoWhite# movement saw a striking increase in the number of non-white attendees and awards the Academy invited a few years ago, said NPR, as did those invited to this year's awards, perhaps a not-so-sublime effort to ease tensions with China and India (disclaimer, I did enjoy both RRR and Everything, Everywhere All At Once, but not enough to label each the "best" in their categories).  Here's what one reviewer in The Atlantic had to say about the whole shebang: The complaints about the Academy Awards are as well rehearsed as the acceptance speech of a surefire victor: The most deserving nominees seldom win, and the most inventive movies of the year typically get no nominations at all.  The voting process is so opaque and so subject to external influence— barraged by ever more expensively managed PR campaigns and buffeted by political and social forces far outside the Academy’s garden walls—that to say the prize has little to do with the recognition of artistic merit is to join a weary chorus.  And yet the whole cinematic world dances to the rhythm of the Oscars' baton, and I refer not merely to the film industry itself, but to a sprawling satellite economy of run-up awards, Oscar-branded media coverage, fashion marketing, and social-media conversation.  To scoff at or criticize or even ignore the annual ritual that is the Academy Awards is not to escape its hold on our culture.  Indeed, the doubters and the haters make up a crucial part of the system.  So what system is that, and what other "systems" are out there?

     Legal scholar (and anthropologist) Khiara M. Bridges said this in her interview with The Sun: When you’re poor, you’re regulated by the systems that provide you with public benefits...Those who need to rely on the state for basic necessities --food, clothing, shelter, health care-- have no privacy rights...I teach a case called Wyman v. James, which more people should be familiar with.  It’s a 1971 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld warrantless searches of welfare recipients’ homes in the state of New York.  The idea was that if you received welfare benefits, you had to allow some state actor to come into your home and look around.  What are they looking for?  They’re making sure you aren’t lying about your need to receive welfare benefits or abusing your kid.  Those sound like pretty good reasons to allow someone to come into your home, right?  But one problem with this is that the Fourth Amendment prohibits the state from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures.  A long line of legal precedent says that in order for the state to search you, either you have to give consent or there has to be probable cause and a warrant.  But in this case the Supreme Court allowed for warrantless, nonconsensual searches of people’s homes simply because they were receiving welfare.  Can you imagine the outrage if Fox News viewers thought the state was going to come into their homes without their consent and without a warrant just to look around and make sure they’re not lying about anything or abusing their kids?...Poor people are not the only ones who receive assistance from the government, but they’re the only group I’m aware of that has to cede claims to privacy and dignity and autonomy in order to receive that money.  Farmers receive incredible amounts of money in subsidies.  The government pays them not to grow certain crops or subsidizes the crops they do grow.  I’m not arguing that they don’t deserve the money.  I’m just observing that farmers receive these subsidies without having to let the government into their homes to check out the bathrooms and the garbage cans.  Her interview goes on to present a differing view on the recent ruling of states rights (a decision largely used by the Supreme Court in overturning Roe vs. Wade), particularly the recently passed SB 8 in Texas, which "was designed to prevent any federal judicial review": What the Supreme Court allowed Texas to do with abortion could apply to any constitutional right.  Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom has announced that his state is going to do something similar when it comes to owning assault rifles. (There is no constitutional right to bear an assault rifle, but owning a handgun is a constitutionally protected activity.)  Mississippi could do it with regard to same-sex marriage.  Florida could do it with regard to practicing non-Christian religions.  The U.S. Constitution is supposed to guarantee certain rights to everybody in the country.  But this Supreme Court has allowed for a patchwork where the rights you possess depend on the state in which you live.  One recent example of this may be Wyoming and its use of states "rights" to be the first to ban the abortion pill, mifepristone.  It's complicated, as in legally complicated, so let's move on to another "system," that of the recent collapse of a few banks.

      Bail out.  You keep hearing that term but more so when it comes to rescuing a bank or several banks.  But one key provision of such rescues is the protection offered by the FDIC for consumer deposits.  And it's important to note that the FDIC is an insurance program that banks --NOT taxpayers or the government-- pay into.  Here's how NerdWallet described it: If a bank fails, such as by losing the ability to pay back debts or return deposits to customers, a bank regulator closes that institution.  The FDIC steps in to protect the bank customers’ funds generally in two ways: paying (or providing access to) funds to affected customers up to the insurance limit and assuming control of the assets and debts of the bank.  In the second role, the FDIC becomes the “receiver” of the failed bank to sell or collect assets, settle debts and manage insured deposits.  The FDIC typically arranges for a healthy bank to acquire a failed bank...Since 2001, there have been 563 bank failures, the majority occurring as a result of the 2007-2009 recession.  For reference, there are roughly 4,700 FDIC-insured banks, as of December 2022.  Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are the first banks to fail since October 2020.  Robert Reich wrote a bit more background in The Guardian but basically it was this...bank runs (where depositors panicked and pulled out their moneis) were common until FDR passed the Glass-Steagall Act which "separated commercial banking from investment banking" (and led to the creation of the FDIC); as Reich put it, "banking became more secure, and boring."  In the 1980s, Clinton and Congress repealed the Act and banks returned to heavily investing in Wall Street; profits for the banks jumped from 15%, to 30%, then 40%, or as Reich noted, "more than four times the profits made in corporate manufacturing."  Then came the crash of 2008...Obama basically used the same people Clinton did to "rescue" the banks at taxpayers' expense, with the caveat that newer --and weaker Dodd-Frank regulations-- would require banks with more than $50 billion in deposits had to hold a reserve of assets; in other words, collateral would be required as a "stress" test.  Trump weakened the regulations even further by increasing that requirement to only those banks that had $250 billion+ in assets so banks such as SVB were now free to invest away without holding much, if anything, back.  As Reich noted: Not surprisingly, Silicon Valley Bank’s own chief executive, Greg Becker, had been a strong supporter of Trump’s rollback.  Becker had served on the San Francisco Fed’s board of directors.  Oh, and Becker sold $3.6m of Silicon Valley Bank stock under a trading plan less than two weeks before the firm disclosed extensive losses that led to its failure.  To be clear, said Bloomberg, the losers of such "smaller" banks such as SVB will tentatively be the executives and the stock holders (not the depositors), although NPR reported that the fine print may tell a different story: "What they mean when they say this isn't a bailout, is it's not a bailout for management," said Richard Squire, a professor at Fordham University's School of Law and an expert on bank bailouts.  "The venture capital firms and the startups are being bailed out.  There is no doubt about that."  It's again, complicated and since I'm not banker or financial guru, a better summary came from The Conversation.  But unfortunately the recent banking failures tie in to yet another system, that of health care...

     Here's how Bloomberg Prognosis summed that "system" up: Silicon Valley Bank is known for its willingness to back startups and the venture firms that fund them.  But what made it so attractive to tech companies made it equally valuable to biotech companies that often spend years --and a ton of money-- trying to develop new drugs.  By the end of last year, venture-backed health companies accounted for 12% of SVB’s $173 billion of deposits and 36% of $168 billion in funds held off balance sheets.  Upstart companies might stash money they raised from investors in accounts at SVB, raising alarm that all might be lost in wake of the bank’s collapse.  That added another possible problem for an industry that’s already in the throes of a downturn.  Investors had already been backing away from biotech with rising interest rates making long-term, risky bets less attractive. SVB’s collapse gave investors another reason to avoid the space...Some 200 publicly listed biotech companies issued statements in recent days mentioning SVB, according to a scan of filings.  For example, infectious-disease company Vir said its SVB accounts equal about $220 million, or 9% of its total $2.4 billion in cash and equivalents.  Another biotech company, Halozyme, said it keeps only a small amount of cash at SVB and although the bank is a lender on a revolving credit facility, the company has no plans to draw on it at this time.  These statements are consistent with what Wall Street analysts concluded from surveying the publicly traded biotech companies they cover, saying most of them faced little, if any, material exposure to SVB...Still, the smaller, closely held startups will probably feel the biggest shocks from SVB’s meltdown.  Silicon Valley, San Francisco, healthcare and biotech.  What else did the bank crisis affect...the homeless?

     Tracy Kidder's new book, Rough Sleepers, talked about homelessness and Dr. Jim O'Connell's decades-long effort to help those on the street, the publisher noting that O'Connell: ...emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends” (and) how a small but dedicated group of people have changed countless lives by facing one of American society’s difficult problems instead of looking away.  When O'Connell asked one "soft-spoken fellow who suffered from schizophrenia" why he wouldn't want to seek shelter on an especially cold night (O'Connell was worried that this particular man might die of hypothermia), the man replied: Look, Doc, if I'm at Pine Street, (O'Connell's shelter) I can't tell which voices are mine and which are somebody else's.  When I stay out here, I know the voices are mine, and I can control them a little.

      As to those voices, the Oscars may have felt a bit of pressure from the OscarsSoWhite# movement; during that year it decided to award a series of Oscars to 12 Years A Slave, even if (according to a review in the LA Times), "two Oscar voters privately admitted that they didn’t see '12 Years a Slave,' thinking it would be upsetting."   The film’s director, British filmmaker Steve McQueen, said repeatedly during the long awards season that Hollywood appeared more comfortable making Holocaust movies than slavery stories.  The review added:.. for all the film’s artistry, the undercurrent of many “12 Years a Slave” conversations hinged on race and how Hollywood has for decades given short shrift to one of the most inglorious chapters in the nation’s history.  But once that year was over, it was back to silence.  Much the same pattern appeared to follow our history with reading, according to Emma Smith in her book, Portable Magic; her book is well, a history of books and the changing (or perhaps unchanging) landscape of those who read them (not much different from those who view movies, in a sense).  One woman she wrote about was the poet and slave, Phillis Wheatley: I, young in life, be seeming cruel fate/ Was snatch'd from Afric's happy seat:/ What pangs excruciating must molest,/ What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?/ ...can I then but pray/ Others may never feel tyrannic sway.  As Smith goes on to note: Not everyone was impressed.  Thomas Jefforson found nothing in Wheatley's poetry to challenge his assertion that Black people did not have creative skills except in music: "In imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.  At least two of the books which feature her poetry have been found to have covers made of human skin.

     Bryce Andrews wrote a letter to his soon-to-be born daughter, a letter which was captured in his recent book about growing up out West as a ranch hand the way his grandfather did but a far cry from his parent's upbringing in Seattle.  In the letter he wrote: If all goes well, you will be born as i was, following the darkest part of winter.  You will first glimpse life as everything breaks bud.  Perhaps this means that you, like me, will have spring's green up woven through the depths of your mind.  I would be pleased to see you inherit such hope, to believe that the world should improve and flower as time goes along.  It is the truth even if things go otherwise...But one day, as you grow into your mind, you will notice that history infects the present.  In your pale inner wrist, the blue blood visible under your skin, you'll mark the inheritance you never sought.  You'll face the knowledge that some of your ancestors, present since the start of North America's European colonization, have been party to episodes of cruelty and destruction so fantastic as to mock the ways in which those long-dead forebears might have been wise, kind, or gracious.  If this unsettles you, it is because your heart is good and your mind sharp.  Unsettled is a fine, strong word.  It can carry you beyond guilt into the realm of action...Ever since I grew to see the American West clearly, I have been whacked by the fact that each generation since the coming of my ancestors left the place worse off --more ecologically fragmented, less just-- than they found it.  It struck me as wrong, this relentless tearing at the fabric of home.  I want your story to diverge from that past.  It already has a different start.  You will be born on a farm that holds more wild life with each passing year.  You will be raised knowing, from the enduring example of the Salish and other Native tribes, that human beings can live thousands of years in a place without ruining it.  Your children, if you have any, will play among many-trunked alders and pines so thick that outspread arms cannot encircle them.  You can show them arched black openings in the brush and tell them how the bears use hidden trails.  You can rest together, sheltered from the sun.  They will like that, I think.  In the world that is coming, they will need shade.

     So full circle, those movies and stories missed or purposely neglected, those people not recognized.  My wife and I belatedly watched the 2020 film The Last Full Measure, a true story of the 32-year-long effort by a handful of vets trying to get a posthumous Medal of Valor awarded to medic William "Pits" Pitsenbarger, a medal which was downgraded not from an oversight but likely due to politics; the movie showed the "voices"  veterans carry and silently have to hold inside, at least those who encountered death and destruction over and over, horrors splashed in their faces and minds (one vet in the credits said that the firepower they encountered during that fateful ambush --the subject of the movie-- was so loud and coming from so many directions that he felt as if he could "see" the bullets).  The movie took 20 years to make; it was turned down by 50 productions studios, the producer/director Todd Robinson eventually writing the script himself and showing it first to veterans before releasing it to the public.  It received no Oscar awards or mentions.   Another film we watched was The Whale, a depressing but penetrating look at someone realizing too late in hsi life that he had long ago made the wrong decision and had left behind what was truly important, his wife and daughter (Brendan Fraser deservedly won Best Actor for his performance, one which required him to wear nearly 300 pounds of prosthetics for the role).* 

     In both movies, the voices of the characters portrayed almost deafen you with their silence, as if a massive ringing bell atop a cathedral is swinging back and forth but not emitting any sound.  Perhaps it is that reflection of history which we all bear, those silent voices, those accomplishments unrecognized, those talents wasted, those people and animals and natures who were cast aside.  Kidder opened her book with a poem which perhaps summed up part of the swirl of emotions which invisibly flutter around and within us, emotions perhaps as repressed and as unheard (or not wanting to be heard) as that silent swinging cathedral bell: I am sometimes upfront.  I am sometimes off-centered.  I am sometimes concealed by myself.  I am sometimes not even friggin' there.  I am strong as an oak and weak as an acorn.  I am a child, love me.  I am a boy, take my hand.  I am a soldier, so please understand.  I am peaceful and proud, humble yet arrogant.  I am calm, yet violent.  I am quiet, yet thunderous.  So if we should meet for a moment on my life's journey smile at me, talk to me, or simply be still.  And know that I am.  The poem was written by US Army veteran (and member of O'Connell's street team), Michael Frada.

*On a personal note, I also belatedly watched the 2006 movie, United 93, about the people --from traffic controllers to passengers onboard-- discovering that the Twin Towers had been hit and that their flight was likely doomed.  It is gripping in its overall scope and captures the disbelief in each of us that death or serious injury may be imminent and that the choices we will all eventually face may need to be made sooner rather than later...the situation was as terrible as any war and it is a film I would recommend (it too was ignored by the Oscars).