Hollywood loves Hollywood, Hollywood loves “La La Land” and like most Newhouse television, radio and film snobs, I do, too. Maybe I’m even listening to Ryan Gosling sing me “City of Stars” while I write this to get in the creative mood.

But, as I’m sure you saw the title of the article, I’m not going to continue giving this film a bigger head than it already has: “La La Land” shouldn’t actually win Best Picture. “Moonlight” should.

The film is beautiful romanticism served up with a healthy dose of reality: It takes a lot of sacrifice — and musical numbers — to reach your goals, and even when you achieve them, nothing is perfect.  Probably because you’re not Ryan Gosling or Emma Stone, but I digress.  Add to that nostalgia for old Hollywood in every scene, the chemistry of Gosling and Stone, and director Damien Chazelle’s — he’s only 31, people — confident and jazzy tone, and you’ve got a universal pleaser on your hands.

At last week’s Golden Globe Awards, “La La Land” took away a record seven out of seven awards, including Best Musical or Comedy.  Then, two days later the BAFTAs — essentially, the British Oscars — announced that the film was up for a whopping 11 nominations.

Then there’s the SAG awards, the Critic’s Choice, the People’s Choice and every other more “minor” award show that point to “La La Land” being a dead-set winner for granddaddy of film honors, the Academy Award for Best Picture, a.k.a., what we annually sit through three hours of rich celebs patting each other on the back on TV just to find out the winner.

Is being too predictable of a win a reason to not win?  Like I previously stated, Hollywood loves Hollywood. Even “Deadpool,” the hard-R Marvel escapade with a very self-aware script — i.e., lots of breaking the fourth wall to make jokes about the filmmakers and their budget — was adored by critics.

Three of the past five winning films have been about show business: “Birdman,” “Argo,” and “The Artist.”  Did anyone else who watched the Golden Globes catch on to every time Chazelle said that this film was a tough sell to studios?  Sure, the musical elements may have been a tough pitch to a studio executive, but the draw of Gosling and Stone’s respective star power, Chazelle’s buzz from his previous film, “Whiplash,” and the “for dreamers” plot seems like a no-brainer for success.

Enter Barry Jenkin’s “Moonlight.” An unknown director, miniscule budget and a plot concerning the masculinity and life struggles of a gay black man growing up in drug-filled Miami — for Hollywood, that is the tough sell. “Moonlight” and “La La Land” essentially duke it out for the top spot on nearly every critic’s “Best of 2016” list, and while the latter came away with the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy, the former snagged Best Drama.

The Oscars don’t divvy up Best Picture by genre like the Globes do, so while nominations haven’t officially been announced yet, the hot gossip around Tinsel Town is pinning these two against each other as the main contenders.

Does any of this matter, you say? It’s just an award, you say?  Our culture affects our media, and our media affects our culture. This give-and-take has been especially prominent in the year we miraculously survived: 2016. With tensions in America, both racial and political, at a high, more people than ever turn to the movies as a sense of escapism. They provide us with windows into lives that are not our own, so that we may empathize and see ourselves in others that we otherwise wouldn’t think to due to our own close-mindedness.

For “Moonlight” to win Best Picture would encourage more difficult stories such as the one told in it to be brought to light on the silver screen. Following last year’s Oscars whose lasting impression was summed up with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, Hollywood is taking a step in the right direction by diversifying. While “La La Land” may be the easier pill to swallow, “Moonlight” is the more vital one.

Lilly Stuecklen is a junior television, radio and film major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. She can be reached at lsstueck@syr.edu.

Published on January 18, 2017 at 11:10 pm