OSCARS
Daily Telegraph - February 2008

I LOVE everything about the Oscars - the red carpet anticipation, the best and worst dressed awards, the sanctimonious acceptance speeches in which fatal diseases, bloody international conflicts and the recipient's relationship with their agent are all invoked with equal gravity.

Most of all, however, I love watching the attempts by the Australian media to find an Aussie angle, a victory we can all cling to, no matter how tenuous the connection.

We are all familiar with the annual rounds of self-congratulation that accompany every Oscar ceremony: the swelling of national pride that comes with the news that second line producers, key grips or obscure members of special effects teams still call Australia home.

I thought I'd heard it all. Then, this week, the phenomenon reached new heights of absurdity when Channel 9 news announced that -- wait for it -- best supporting actress winner Tilda Swinton's mother is Australian.

Admittedly, the Oscars this year were mostly a disappointment for Australia: Cate Blanchett missed out on both her nominations and I'm sure there was some guy in the catering or message delivery category narrowly beaten in suspicious circumstances.

Then again, Aussie girl Eva Orner did win for her film Taxi to the Dark Side, a fact celebrated throughout the country as a victory for Aussie film-making in defiance of the fact that Orner was only one of two main producers (the other was American), that the film was written, produced and directed by an American and that Orner has been living in New York for four years during which time she has inexplicably developed a weird Greg Normanesque accent.

With all due respect to Orner, these are shaky foundations on which to build the pride of a nation.

Australia is a country that likes to win at everything, an attitude that has urged us on to giddy heights in swimming and lawn mower technology. But are we really so desperate for victory that we must now resort to obscure genealogical boasts?

I mean, Tilda Swinton's mother? What next? Does Daniel Day-Lewis have an aged aunt hiding somewhere in Brisbane? Does Tom Hanks have a third cousin who took a snorkelling holiday at the Great Barrier Reef? If it helps, I heard a rumour that Martin Scorsese once watched an episode of McLeod's Daughters he kind of enjoyed.

Australian competitiveness can be admirable. The flipside, however, is that we are notoriously bad losers: if we haven't been cheated outright then we will claim a moral victory.

Of course, if all else fails we can always start our own competition -- an award for best supporting country.

We'd know who'd win every year and Tilda Swinton's mother might get a break from all that expectation.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008