Why I am anti the McConaissance and why I don't think losing weight=great acting

Sigh. In less than 24 hours, Matthew McConaughey will be an Oscar winner. Take that in for a moment. 

This guy:

The star of: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, Fools Gold, Failure to Launch, Ghosts of Girlfriend's Past, The Paperboy, Surfer Dude, We Are Marshall, Sahara, etc. 

Oh boy. My brother and I keep wondering exactly how this happened. (And can I just remind you of all the really great actors out there who do not have an Oscars? Leo, Joaquin...)

So, let me break down my anti the McConaissance for you. As my favourite gossip blogger Lainey has repeatedly said in these past months leading up the Oscars: Matthew McConaughay in Dallas Buyers Club is Matthew McConaughay in How to Lose a Guy in 10 days, minus 50 pounds.

Losing 50 pounds is not acting. It is actually the exact opposite of acting. It is changing your physical appearance, nothing more. No pretending involved, no craft. Does it take commitment? Yes. Does it take acting? No.

The willingness of the Academy to award actors for merely changing their physical appearance I think illustrates the fact that they have no respect for the craft and art of acting. Acting is hard, acting extremely well, is even harder. Losing/gaining weight is something that anyone could do with enough time, patience, willingness etc. But this is what wins awards:

Christian Bale in the Fighter  = Oscar

Natalie Portman in Black Swan = Oscar

Charlize Theron in Monster = Oscar

Tom Hanks in Philadelphia = Oscar

Anne Hathaway in Les Mis = Oscar

This is not to say that the examples above are not also great performances, but what I want to say is that simply losing (a lot of) weight, if it isn't that remarkable a performance, should not warrant an Oscar.

And this is the case with the Texas T-Rex.

I forced myself to watch Dallas Buyers Club so I could be legitimized in my criticisms of MM, even though I had zero interest in the film. Why wasn't I interested? Of course I think narratives about people living with HIV and AIDS and their lack of access to ARV medications are important stories to tell. Having spent a lot of time in Kenya, with people living and dying of AIDS, these are issues close to me, but when I first heard about what the movie was about, I was a bit resentful that the story focused on a straight white homophobic man. I'm not sure that's really the story of AIDS in American in the 1980's that I'm most interested in hearing. Isn't it always the white straight male narrative that we see? I was also resentful of the fact that Jared Leto (another white, straight, man) was cast as a trans character. And I'm not saying that straight actors can't play gay characters or cis actors can't play trans characters, but why not consider casting a trans actor?

After watching the movie I will admit it wasn't as terrible as I thought it was going to be (but my expectations were really really low). Having said that, I still don't think it was a very good film. I actually found it quite hard to engage in and found myself bored (I paused it a whole number of times to do other things which is not like me at all). I also think that a lot of the transitions/editing in the last quarter of the film were awkward and poorly done (distractingly so), and I didn't find Matthew McConaughaey's character arc at all compelling-but rather extremely predictable and cliché. Here is this white trash homophobic guy who gets AIDS, is given a month to live, scams his way into getting the drugs he needs to feel better, ends up selling these drugs to other AIDS patients to make money, and then eventually grows a conscience and isn't a homophobe anymore. I also don't think the acting was particularly challenging either. Other than losing a huge amount of weight, MM was pretty much just playing a presumably more discriminatory version of himself. 

The other thing I find upsetting about MM's imminent Oscar win, is that the whole Award season his acceptance speeches have not only been awful, but I think somewhat offensive. He blubbers on about practically nothing, while spouting his alright, alright, alright catch phrase, calls himself a god damned "king" (go and watch his Golden Globes speech right now) and doesn't give any kind of respect or tribute to the people who are living with or who have died of AIDS. Ugh, he's the worst. BOO!