From relentless campaigning to snubs and speeches, the Academy Awards have often reflected a cultural conflict zone. Michael Schulman sifts through the controversies in his book, Oscar Wars. Maureen Corrigan reviews The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
On the Ted radio hour, linguist Ann.
Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me, but it can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is.
The history behind words causing a lot of debate.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Terry Gross.
With the Oscars coming up next month, we're going to hear stories about earlier behind the scenes battles we don't see on the night Hollywood celebrates itself.
In my guest Michael Shulman's book Oscar A History of Hollywood in gold, sweat and tears.
He says, quote, the Oscars have become a conflict zone for issues of race, gender and representation, high profile signifiers of whose stories get told and whose don't.
In previous decades, Oscar wars were waged over different issues, but they were no less fraught, unquote.
The very existence of the Oscars and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which administers them, were created in an attempt to resolve a conflict in young Hollywood back in the late 1920s.
The conflicts Shulman writes about involve labor battles, World War Two, anti communist hysteria and blacklists, old Hollywood versus new Hollywood, the Me Too movement.
Oscars so white, the zillions of dollars spent on campaigning for oscars, and, of course, greed and ego.
Shulman has written for the New Yorker since 2006.
Among the people hes written about are Pedro Almodovar, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Moss, Adam Driver and Jeremy Strong.
Hes also the author of a book about Meryl Streep.
His book, Oscar wars comes out in paperback this week.
We recorded our interview shortly before last year's oscars, when the book was first published.