First of all, I want to make something abundantly clear: the Academy Awards are not about recognizing the most excellent films of the year. The Academy Awards are an industry promotional vehicle, and are set up in such a way that excellence in filmmaking generally has very little to do with who is nominated or wins. I’m not saying this because I am a bitter cynic, I’m saying it because it’s true.
What do you know, it’s Oscar time yet again. The truth is that I tend to consider the Oscars a poor representation of excellence in filmmaking, but as I am officially a film studies student, it’s my business to give a shit about them now.
This week in one of my film studies classes, we’ve been discussing D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, a silent-era film about a Chinese immigrant who falls tragically in love with an abused London waif. I’d never seen the film before, and while I stand by my rating and review as posted yesterday to Filmikaze, I’ve also had to complete a critical analysis of the depiction of race, gender and class within the film, and feel it’s fair to offer that here as a sort of companion piece to the review.
