There are very few movies I can watch twice. Especially musicals.  Although my wife and I had seen La La Land in the theater when it was released, we saw it again at home the other night and enjoyed it just as much the second time around.  It is a well-told story and astonishing film, from an opening sequence of incredible choreography, camera work, and performances, many other stunning displays of the filmmaker’s craft throughout, and an emotionally rich and thought-provoking ending done brilliantly.  But it was not awarded the Oscar for best motion picture.

Of course it wasn’t.

In thirty years La La Land will still be watched and appreciated while many of the other contenders will have been forgotten.  But in this age identity consciousness rules not just politics, but the arts as well.

This, too, will pass. Or at least we must hope it will.

I had a English lit professor in college , the department chair no less, explain to me condescendingly that all – ALL – literary criticism worthy of the name was Freudian. (So I wrote my final paper for him from a Jungian perspective.  I could tell by his margin notes that this frustrated him terribly.  He gave me a “B” for the paper and for the semester.  Funny, I got “A’s” in all my other classes that term.)

Anyway within a few short years, Freudian criticism in all its imbecility was on its way out and by now much of it is a laughingstock. Let’s hope identity politics follows soon.

Here’s an interesting piece in The American Conservative, Film Criticism’s Identity Crisis, about the politically correct Oscars, the diversity police and La La Land.

The Best of Charles Goyette