Can’t ‘Bottoms’ Just Be a Fun Film Instead of an Awards Contender?
There was a portion of my teenage years where I, like a lot of other annoying but ultimately harmless gay adolescents, replaced a little thing called “having friends” with Oscars obsession. (Oscars obsession is a malady that is symptomatic of gayness, but not something that all gay men experience—as any chronic WebMD lurker will tell you: Sometimes those afflicted will show no symptoms at all.) Starting in November, I’d toss away most of my high-school companions until the spring thaw to prioritize movies. It was a sacrifice, but one that was necessary to make if I was going to be able to see each and every potential Oscar contender possible before the ceremony sometime after the new year.
Over the years, I managed to temper that obsession. Now, when awards season rolls around, I’m almost fatigued. Don’t get me wrong: Being a critic means that I remain perennially invested in the journey that most films take. I just don’t get all worked up over it anymore. There are so many other, better things to spend my time worrying about than which film will be nominated or win any Oscar. Maybe that’s just part of growing up, but I’m not so sure, given how many adults I’ve seen online lately starting grassroots Oscar campaigns for just about every film out there.
There’s no real problem with being so passionate about a film that you want it to go all the way to the biggest stage that it can. But what happened to some films just being good enough to enjoy? Or, yet, a more pressing question: What happened to some films just being fun? With the violent, raunchy comedy Bottoms releasing nationwide this weekend after a sturdy one-week limited release—during which it already generated Oscar hype from a bevy of social media users—I’ve been pondering this more than ever. Our technologically saturated state has turned loving film into a compulsively documented sport, and Bottoms, of all movies, is now on the front lines of a race that I doubt its creators have given much thought to.
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Now that I’ve seen Bottoms twice, I’m confident that I enjoy its divisive nature. It’s a near totally nonsensical film that deftly mixes parody with earnest, linear storytelling and conventional high-school movie tropes. Its stars, Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, give two of 2023’s funniest performances as a pair of loser lesbians who start a “self-defense club” (read: fight club) as a ruse to get their school’s hot girls to join. It’s a delightfully repulsive premise that has no qualms about painting its gay characters as shitty, slightly predatory tricksters, who do a very dumb thing—at an age when we’re all very dumb—just for some attention and validation.
It’s almost like the movie is warning against using outside factors to validate oneself and our interests, but that hasn’t stopped fans of Bottoms from attaching their identities to this movie and, subsequently, its success. In fact, the film’s online marketing has made a point to use real Letterboxd reviews and Twitter comments in its flashy graphics. “More loser girl representation in cinema!” reads one. “Finally some representation for lesbians who were horny losers in high school,” reads another. Sure, these reviews are hyperbolizing the film’s legitimate representation of marginalized groups, but it’s plain to see that Bottoms’ ability to appeal to its core demographic—young queer people with a penchant for absurdist humor—is easily mistaken for superior quality and artistic excellence. Another Letterboxd review-turned-promotional graphic reads, “This movie is absolute chaos, it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.” I just have to wonder…is it? Does this person really believe that to be true?
The Letterboxd-ification of the online cinephile community has certainly made its impact known in the past few years. The platform, which allows users to log, rate, and review movies, has its own highly successful YouTube channel, with recent videos featuring staff members chatting with the likes of Barbie director Greta Gerwig and even Bottoms’ two leads and its director, Emma Seligman. It’s also a place where habitually online cinephiles repeatedly document their love of a movie from its initial release all the way up to awards season. Letterboxd appears to generate an untold amount of organic hype for smaller movies like Bottoms, and it’s become an important tool for many different facets of the industry's success. But all of that excitement can easily twist itself into a misconception about a film’s larger intentions, which leads to the natural next step: grassroots gunning for Oscar consideration.
In a post-Everything Everywhere All at Once world, where bizarro, unconventional films can “now” win cinema’s highest prize (though I’d argue that they’ve been doing that on and off for a while), it seems there’s a notion that just because a movie could plausibly be nominated for an Oscar means that it should be. In the case of Bottoms, I just don’t think that’s true. It’s a hilarious, wildly fun movie that goes for broke when it comes to wanton absurdity. Can’t that be enough? More than its quality and its success, entertainment value should count toward validating your personal feelings toward a movie and your attachment to it. In the case of Bottoms, its existence has even gained a ton of critical and commercial traction within just one week in theaters. That already seems like a major win, one that doesn’t warrant it becoming the tentpole movie for a new movement of queer awards contenders—something that Bottoms just isn’t designed to be.
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Just because the Academy really is in a “new era,” where all types of great films have a shot at the gold, doesn’t mean audiences should conflate winning an Oscar with a movie’s overall quality. There are plenty of fantastic films that are never even considered for Oscar attention—a stance that most film lovers have held for decades, since the early days of the ceremony, up until as recently as this year. If, come next year, Bottoms isn’t nominated for Best Original Screenplay, will the world end? I’d actually say that, if Bottoms were to somehow be nominated and then win that category, it’s not that major of an achievement—considering the film that took home the prize last year cheapened its emotional resonance with bagels, butt plugs, hot dog fingers, and Jewish caricatures.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to tie your identity to a film; if making a movie your entire personality was illegal, I would’ve spent the six years between 2006 and 2012 in juvie for The Devil Wears Prada-related crimes. But where things get dicey is the belief that Academy attention validates a movie—and therefore, more importantly, your personal attachment to it. If you really believe it’s a new dawn of the Oscars, more power to you! But to spend so long being appropriately critical of an institution, only to turn right back around and pray it recognizes the personal significance a movie has to you, won’t be any more affirming in the long run than just being content with the knowledge that you enjoyed what you saw. Your amusement is ultimately what matters.
Looking back, I know now that I was so preoccupied with making Hollywood awards season part of my personality as a teenager because I thought that it made me seem knowledgeable, sophisticated, and different from my more ignorant peers. By having a vested interest in these films—and especially their steady progression from early awards buzz to their actual release—I could be an early adopter of the movie that eventually wins big. And if I could manage that, it would mean that I have a discerning taste, and that taste would be endorsed by the most prestigious voting body in Hollywood. That would be the armor that I held close to myself, something that I could take with me even when I felt my identity under siege by those around me. If someone didn’t like me for who I was, what did that matter, if I at least had some pool of faceless voters to confirm my level of refinement?
Going into Oscar season these days, I know that having my personal tastes validated by others doesn’t really matter. Of course, I want to see all of the films that I love get nominated, and I want the artists behind them to be recognized for their hard work. An Oscar is a major accolade because it stands to open doors and create new, necessary opportunities for those who have long gone underrepresented by a heavily respected industry platform. The importance of that is not something I would ever aim to refute or deny to the artists who invested their time and talent into these or any projects.
But something I learned a long time ago is that recognition won’t help you sleep better at night, and that’s true for both people who make films and those who love to watch them. The only way to achieve gratification is to be satisfied with why the art speaks to you, and why you fell in love with it. That’s how the work stays with you; it fills you up, and you become a product of it, instead of leaving a hollow space inside of you until the next passion project comes along.
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