We now have the perfect title for the year...CRASH! Before this year ends another kind of CRASH should "upset and surpise" many more people.
--Roberto
Brokeback still won three awards; so attitudes are not far from the high discussed here on January 17. As cultural expressions go, Crash's push past Brokeback in the Oscar voting may turn out to be an important expression of the cultural tipping point from a bull to a bear market. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked past the tender love story of two cowboys to choose a fractured story of "racial and cultural tension" as Best Picture, the end of the long advance was finally at hand. The dominat cultural significance of hostitlity and opposition is discussed in the Cultural Trends section of this month's The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast. In the comment above, we were talking about conflict between gay rights groups and anti-gay factions; it should appear before the lows are in place.
One of the thing we noted about Brokeback back in January was that, culturally speaking, it's popularity marks another parrellel to the mixed social environment of late 1960s. This was confirmed by the re-issuance of Midnight Cowboy, a movie that hit precisely the same notes in 1969, when it became the first and only X-rated movie to win the Best Picture Oscar. "The success of Brokeback lends this movie a new resonance since it is the original 'gay cowboy' movie," writes a movie critc for The Dallas Morning News. "It's a cliché to say that it is tame by today's standards (it has been re-rated R) and, in surface terms of what and how much it shows, it is. But in deeper, subtler ways it seems even more powerful and disturbing."
Another parallel to the late 1960s that is worth mentioning is the 1967 winner, In the Heat of the Night. Another story of simmering racial tension that was a surprise winner over a more risque favorite, The Graduate.
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