The country is sick of unilateralism, unipolarism (to use the neocons’ arrogant word). The Oscars this year were a bath of internationalism. Javier Bardem won Best Actor and spoke in exalted Spanish, a nonverbal French chick won Best Actress, surprising everyone. A French producer said he couldn’t speak English so he spoke French, and Tilda Swinton spoke a cultivated arch English that was unintelligible to this American ear. The best picture of the year (deservedly) was an interpretation by two Jewish guys of a western fable imagined by a Catholic novelist. The best foreign film was a morally-complex Holocaust story told by an Austrian who states openly and with shame that his parents (or grandparents–sorry, heard him on the radio) were Nazis.
Of course Hollywood was given to America by outsider business Jews, but praise the lord we are moving past the Spielbergian Katzenbergian extravaganza era to one of dark sophisticated European-influenced art. The trend is good for Obama, and good for the Palestinians too.
