Representing Race, Gender, and War at the Oscars

There’s a moment near the end of The Hurt Locker, last night’s winner for Oscar’s best picture, when Sergeant First Class William James stands in a grocery store under fluorescent lights, adult contemporary jazz playing over the loudspeaker, facing the urgent American consumer choice of picking from among row after row of the slightly different versions of the same boxes of food. It’s a moment of profound alienation, and the way director Kathryn Bigelow renders it on screen, under that stark light, James standing dead center in the aisle, stopped cold, after all we’ve seen him do, shocks the complacent Read More …