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The Oscar ceremony some years is highlighted by the performances of the nominees for Best Original Song. They’re ready made viral moments for social media, which the Academy has been chasing. This year? They’re opting to feature only two of the five nominees with live performances, giving the two highest profile songs the added moment. More below.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, only Golden from KPop Demon Hunters and I Lied to You from Sinners will be performed during the broadcast. That means the other three nominees, Dear Me from Diane Warren: Relentless, Train Dreams from Train Dreams, and Sweet Dreams of Joy from Viva Verdi!, will be introduced via segments with footage from the films, as well as behind the scenes. It’s another attempt to keep the show at a manageable length, so make of this what you will. More when we have it, if a reversal is made in any way.
Source: THR
When an Oscar (or other acting-award) nominee wins and accepts the prize at the podium, he/she typically thanks the various other participants in the relevant film’s creation. For me what’s always conspicuously lacking in the brief speech is any mention of the infants or toddlers used in filming negatively melodramatic scenes, let alone any potential resultant harm to their very malleable psyches, perhaps even PTSD trauma.
Yes, I have a bit of a problem with the entertainment industry using infants or toddlers.
Long before reading Dr. Sigmund Freud’s or other academics’ theories/thoughts on early-life trauma, I, while cringing, was (still am) astonished at how the producers and directors of negatively hyper-emotional big-/small-screen ‘entertainment’ could comfortably conclude that no psychological harm would come to their infant/toddler ‘actors’ as they screamed in bewilderment.
Admittedly, I’d initially presumed there had to be a reliable educated consensus within the entertainment industry and psychology academia that there’s little or no such risk, otherwise the practice would logically and compassionately have ceased. But then I became increasingly doubtful of the factual accuracy of any such potential consensus.
Cannot one logically conclude by observing their turmoil-filled facial expressions that they’re perceiving, and likely cerebrally recording, the hyper-emotional scene activity around them at face value rather than as a fictitious occurrence? More so, how could the parents of those undoubtedly extremely upset infants/toddlers allow it?!
Contemporary research reveals that, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.123).
Additionally known is that the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).
The entertainment industry’s misuse of animals during filming rightfully isn’t tolerated as a general rule; and, likewise, it should not use infants and toddlers in adversely hyper-emotional drama — especially if substitutes, such as mannequin infants and/or computer-generated imagery (CGI), can be used more often.
PostScript: In his book The Interpretation of Dreams Dr. Freud states: “It is painful to me to think that many of the hypotheses upon which I base my psychological solution of the psychoneuroses will arouse skepticism and ridicule when they first become known. For instance, I shall have to assert that impressions of the second year of life, and even the first, leave an enduring trace upon the emotional life of subsequent [neurotic persons], and that these impressions — although greatly distorted and exaggerated by the memory — may furnish the earliest and profoundest basis of a [neurotic] symptom. … In confirmation of this I recall certain examples in which the death of the father occurred when the child was very young, and subsequent incidents, otherwise inexplicable, proved that the child had unconsciously preserved recollections of the person who had so early gone out of its life.”