Viola Davis Speech: Yay or Nay

 Think I'll be in the cell next to you, I agree with you. Having said that, she is a tremendous actress but I could do without her speeches.

She's been giving the same type of grandiose speech for the last 5 or 6 years. I was actually glad that this speech wasn't all about race as her usual speeches are.

And let's be real, this win was really a "career achievement" award, and it was based around the belief that Viola was "overdue" for an Oscar. I didn't think there was anything particularly special about this performance. She did the same crying-with-boogers thing that she does in just about every movie/tv show that she's in.

NAY....Stop acting like you are so important Viola !!!!

Nay, she's become insufferable. And she used to be my parent's neighbor so I really had nothing against her!

I'm one of those people who doesn't take the AAMPAS or awards very seriously, but I do sometimes get caught up in the emotion of it all, just because I can see it's all very meaningful and important to the recipient. This is the first time I've watched the telecast in over ten years.

I did feel happy for her, and for the record, I do think she's a f***ing great actress, but I thought her speech was badly worded. By that I mean; I ultimately did understand the sentiment she was expressing, I just felt like she wasn't as concise as she could have been.

The whole thing about knowing where all the people with the greatest potential are gathered together, that being the graveyard. She was going in a particular direction with that, but she jumped into talking about being asked "What stories do you want to tell?" way too fast, leaving that mental image of dead people just hanging there without context.

I know she was trying to give it context, I know she meant "There are countless people who have lived noble and dignified lives, lives worthy of a story, but they died anonymously. Regular people who had such potential, people who had dreams but couldn't make them come true because of the harshness of life. Regular people you pass on the street every day but never think to notice, who died without you noticing. They still have stories worth telling". When she moved on to the bit about exhuming bodies, she meant "Making the dead live again by telling the tales of their lives". I just don't think it was the greatest mental picture to conjure, especially the very medical, very stark use of the phrase 'exhuming bodies' (you're not focusing on the actual positive meaning of what she's saying, because you're picturing corpses coming out of the ground).

When she said "We are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life", she didn't mean "Our profession is the only one that really LIVES, all other professions don't know how to LIVE like we do!". That's not what she meant.

In the context of what she said before that, she meant "We're the only profession that celebrates what it means to be human, we're the only profession that celebrates the stories of every day people and the lives they live".

She was basically saying that artists, more than other professions, take a vested interest in the human condition in order to foster understanding, reflect our experiences back at us, explore emotion in all forms, help people make sense of what they go through, bring comfort and support, perhaps get people thinking about an experience of life very different from their own, and all the rest. They do this by telling stories, by making art which says "Your life experience is worth celebrating no matter who you are or where you come from, even if you're not rich, popular, or perfect. Even if you're laying in a graveyard after reaching the end of a life in which your dreams did not come true". Still, it would have helped if she had said 'artists'. I genuinely think that's what she meant, but it did come off like she meant 'actors' specifically, which is easy to resent.

I think she was alluding to the characters in 'Fences' too, of course. Ordinary people who had big aspirations and dreams like all of us, but never saw those dreams come true. It's not a movie about people who reach the top and get everything they ever wanted, it's not about perfect humans who have no flaws or shortcomings. It's about average people, flawed people coping with the painful disappointments in life, but it's still a story well worth telling.

So, yeah, I know she meant all of that, but I had to listen to it a second time to recognize it. I just feel like she left out a lot of context and extrapolation in favor of attempting more poetic imagery. She's not the first person to do that, definitely not the last. I understand it's a big moment for people who win, I just wish more of them would stop with the grandstanding.

I'm waiting for the day one of them gets up there, takes the statue, says "Awesome" into the mic, and walks away.

Oh hell yeah she was dramatic and totally flying on the high of self-importance, like she was in a movie about the Oscars instead of at the actual Oscars, but I honestly didn't think she was any worse than most of them (I'm put in mind of the South Park "Smug Alert" episode, one of my favorites of all time).

Like I said, I haven't watched the telecast in over ten years, and that's one of the biggest reasons why. Again, I'm happy for the performers I like when they achieve something important to them, but to me, it's just a statue from a small consolidation of privileged movers and shakers, not a genuine representation of the 'best' film-making has to offer (not by a long shot). It made me groan so much, I stopped watching and only catch the highlight reels after the fact.

I don't think she was trying to say art or acting is the most important thing ever, just that it delves into the human experience in ways other professions do not. I personally do think the arts are extremely important, and I do think there would be a place for artists and entertainers even in the post-apocalypse.

This is just me, and since this is a message board, I want to say I'm not trying to come off as attacking you or arguing for argument's sake (I took to recording some message board replies with Vocaroo for awhile, just so people could hear my tone of voice and know for certain I wasn't trying to be a condescending prick or an aggressor, but people didn't seem to want to go in for that). I wholeheartedly agree that performers and artists of all kinds can disappear up their own asses way too often, and they take themselves way too seriously. I worked in low-budget, no-budget film making for nearly a decade, and there were pretentious, grandiose divas even when a public park bathroom was their changing room.

I wonder if any of these actors ever look back at their speeches later on? I wonder how many of them look back and feel embarrassed at how carried away and puffed up they got in the moment.