Mo'Nique and "politics"

There seems to be some confusion over what Mo’Nique meant last night in her acceptance speech for best supporting actress. During the speech, she said something about the work being celebrated over the politics of awards season, or some such, which many people have taken to mean that she referring to politics in the PC vs. anti-PC sense. Ezra Klein writes “By all accounts, Precious deserves its acclaim, but it also seems like the sort of movie you give awards to if you’re, well, taking into account the politics.”

He then embeds a Bloggingheads clip that tries to explain just what she really meant:* It’s not about politics in the DC sense but the LA sense. The Oscars are, oftentimes, only in part about the performances on the screen. Oftentimes the winners are the ones who most successfully campaigned for the role. Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, by all accounts, were working the cocktail party circuit hard, which helped change the narrative about the Oscars, which helped the tiny-grossing Hurt Locker beat the behemoth that was Avatar.

Mo’Nique was fortunate enough that her performance was so strong that she didn’t need to get out there and campaign hard for the win. In a perfect world, that’s how it’d always be. Of course, in a perfect world the presidential candidate with the best policies and the most experience would be elected president, and not the flashiest campaigner/best speech giver. But I digress.

*She gets a little sidetracked in talking about how Mo’Nique has built her audience by working her way up through black entertainment, and I am not sure that’s what Mo’Nique was really getting at. But the point is essentially the same: She felt that she didn’t need to justify herself and wanted to let the work speak for itself.