1. The Academy's selection of "Parasite" as best picture is attracting a lot of attention, and justly so, as a breakthrough in recognizing foreign-language films and the achievements of nonwhite filmmakers. But there's another dimension that isn't getting much attention.
2. That dimension is class conflict. "Parasite" is a closely observed and fairly bleak social satire about inequalities of wealth. Wealth inequality has never been an easy topic for Hollywood liberals. Racial and gender inequality aren't easy topics, either, of course ...
3. ... but wealth inequality poses special challenges in an industry characterized by extreme wealth. There's a hashtag for #oscarsowhite, but none I'm aware of for #oscarsorich. Most discussion of wealth inequality in Hollywood is about ...
4. ... finding ways to share more equitably the distribution of wealth among people who, by any reasonable definition, are quite wealthy. It's an awkward subject. Looking down the list of past best picture winners you don't see a lot of movies about social class.
5. "Slumdog Millionaire" is, sort of, about that, but it's also a sunny fantasy with a feel-good ending. "My Fair Lady," which was based on a play written by a socialist, puts some tart social commentary into the mouth of Alfred Doolittle, but really it's about ...
6. ... upward mobility. John Ford and Jane Darwell won Oscars for "The Grapes of Wrath" in 1941, but it didn't win best picture (it lost to Alfred Hitchcock's first American film, "Rebecca"). As best I can tell, "Parasite" is the first straight-up movie about class conflict ...
7. ... and wealth inequality to win a best picture Oscar. That seems worth taking note of. The End.
PS Actually I found ONE article on Twitter with the hashtag #oscarsorich, put there by @KayHymowitz. It's a pretty interesting WashPost piece from three years ago: washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-…
