Bookshelf Battle

Hello 3.5 readers.

Bookshelf Q. Battler, here to talk to you about a very sensitive subject.

By now you’ve heard of the “#OscarsSoWhite” controversy. For the second consecutive year, no non-white actors or actresses have been nominated for the entertainment industry’s most coveted prize.

As you’re all aware, I am a paragon of fairness, and while I’m loathe to throw stones, I’m pretty sure it is safe to assume, based on the criticism levied at this completely useless awards ceremony in which the mega rich and ultra glamorous pat one another on the back, that everyone in Hollywood has a klan robe hanging in their closet.

But I’m not here to talk about that issue.  This matter has already been widely reported and will be a part of the public dialogue for weeks to come leading up to the ceremony itself.

No, what I’m here to discuss is a question that’s loomed large on my mind my entire life but I’ve never had the courage to say anything about it until now:

WHY ARE THE OSCARS SO DAMN PRETTY?

There.  I said it and as an advocate for the ugly, it felt good.

The Academy assures us that it is taking steps to ensure that the Oscars will be more diverse in the future, an excellent move of course.  However, whether you’re black or white, asian or latino, or some other ethnicity, one thing is for certain:

IF YOU ARE AN UGLY PERSON, YOU’LL BE STRUCK BY LIGHTNING ON YOUR WAY TO CASH IN YOUR WINNING POWERBALL TICKET LONG BEFORE YOU GET NOMINATED.

Not convinced?  That’s ok.  You’re probably an attractive person. You suffer from “Attractive Person Privilege” and have thus lived your entire life oblivious to the plight of the ugly person.

You were always invited to parties.  Hell, people threw parties in the hopes that you’d attend.  People feel like their lives have been enriched if you simply walk past them.  If you get lost and take a wrong turn into a neighborhood you’re not familiar with, no one calls the cops on you to report that a damn C.H.U.D. is on the loose. You’ve never cried yourself to sleep after spending an evening researching the costs of various anti-uglification surgeries.

Yes, attractive person, you should definitely sign up for some ugly person sensitivity training, but in the meantime, just take a look at this year’s nominees and tell me that there isn’t a pro attractive person bias:

BEST ACTOR:  

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Jesus H. Christ look at this guy. It’s like when he was being made in Heaven’s people factory, God got up off his ass, walked down to the assembly line, and personally supervised the production process.  Leonardo literally cannot take two steps down the street without being slapped in the face with a vagina.  That’s how badly women want him.

In The Revenant, Leo plays a man who gets the shit mauled out of him by a damn fat ass bear and then has to drag his mortally wounded carcass across miles of unexplored territory but somehow, he still manages to cast a striking figure the entire time.

I can tell you I have to go through an entire morning routine just to upgrade myself to C.H.U.D status so if I were mauled by a damn bear I’d just end up too ugly to even walk out of the house.

(Millennials, C.H.U.D. stands for “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller.” They were in a horror movie in the eighties.  They’re very ugly.  Not only would a C.H.U.D. never win an Academy Award, but you’d never want to swipe right on one if you saw it on Tinder.)

MATT DAMON 

Shit.  What a handsome son of a bitch.  He’s so good looking that every movie he is in, from Saving Private Ryan to The Martian, is about all the time, money, and effort entire teams of people are willing to expend just to get him back whenever he’s lost because that’s just how precious he is to everyone.

Do you know what The Martian would be like if I had been cast in the lead role? The entire movie would be one minute long and it’d be a bunch of dudes at NASA saying, “F$%K that I’m not going to put in overtime just to retrieve an ugly guy.  That ugly bastard can rot on Mars for all I care.”

Saving Private Ryan? Tom Hanks leads his men into enemy territory to rescue Matt Damon.

Saving Private Battler? Tom Hanks would let the Nazis keep me.

ANY QUESTIONS?

“BUT BQB, BRYAN CRANSTON WAS NOMINATED FOR TRUMBO AND HE’S NOT ALL THAT HANDSOME.”

No, but he’s not ugly either.  Believe it or not but it is possible to be in a gray area where you’re not a suave ass baller but you’re also not a C.H.U.D.

You can be just an average looking guy or gal and be considered for an Oscar.  It still isn’t as easy it is for attractive people.  You have to work extra hard, be in the business for years, take self-deprecating roles like Cranston did as the dumb Dad on Malcolm in the Middle.  If you do all that then maybe, just maybe, they’ll think about handing you a little gold statue if, but only if, you’re lucky enough to get cast in a role that you act the shit out of, like Cranston did in Breaking Bad.

Do all that and MAYBE JUST MAYBE you’ll get a nod as an average person.  Forget it if you’re a hideous mutant.

“BUT BQB, EDDIE REDMAYNE WON AN OSCAR LAST YEAR AND HE WAS NOMINATED AGAIN THIS YEAR.”

True, but here is the thing:

THERE’S A SMALL SUBSET OF UGLY PEOPLE WHO ARE UGLY IN JUST THE RIGHT WAY THAT IT MAKES THEM ADORABLE.

Eddie Redmayne is one of those people.  Benedict Cumberbatch is another.  There must be something in the water in England.  Come to think of it, the UK is the home of the pug.  Have you ever seen a pug?  You just want to smoosh their wittle faces don’t you?

If you’re a pug the Academy will look the other way.

We’ve talked about the men, but what about the women?

BEST ACTRESS:

JENNIFER LAWRENCE

Holy Crap.  Look, I’m not trying to be inappropriate here, but that chick can catch any D she wants any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  Not saying she does. Just saying that she never, ever has to worry about being alone. If she ever feels alone, she can just put her head out her front door and shout, “I’m Jennifer Lawrence! Who wants to talk to me?” and then talk to the ten thousand men that show up.

This woman is so hot that she stars in a Young Adult movie series in which she can’t figure out which of the two dudes who wants her to pick. When was the last time you ever had a choice?  Before I met Video Game Rack Fighter, I don’t recall ever having any choices to make in my past dating life. If a woman was willing to acknowledge my existence after a first date, then I asked her out again.

Jennifer Lawrence is so hot that cyber criminals actually hacked her phone because that’s how badly they wanted to see pictures of her butt.  No one wants to look at pictures of my butt I’ll tell you.  You will be scarred for life from that sight.  If anything, hackers might hack my phone to install a program on it that prevents me from taking pictures of my butt.  Not that I was going to do that anyway but still.

CATE BLANCHETT

Cate Blanchett has been in the acting biz a long time.  She’s hot when she plays straight women. In Carol, she plays a lesbian.  Just throwing it out there, if I were a woman, I’d become a lesbian just to go out with Cate Blanchett.

ANY QUESTIONS?

“BUT BQB, CHARLOTTE RAMPLING WAS NOMINATED AND SHE’S SO OLD!”

Hold on to your hats, 3.5 readers, because I’m about to let you in on one of Hollywood’s biggest Oscar loopholes:

LOOKS FADE.  EVEN ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE KNOW THAT.  AND NOT EVERY ATTRACTIVE PERSON CAN WIN AN OSCAR EVERY YEAR. ERGO, IF YOU ARE AN ACTOR OR ACTRESS AND YOU GET OLD, YOU’LL BE CONSIDERED FOR AN OSCAR AS LONG AS YOU WERE SUPER HOT WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG.

Google some pictures of Charlotte Rampling in her heyday.  Again, not trying to be inappropriate, but Charlotte Rampling in her prime was a world class source of boner inspiration.

Same scenario for Jessica Tandy. When she was young, Jessica Tandy pitched more tents than Barnum and Bailey.  That’s why they were willing to give her an Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy when she was at the end of her life and looked like the Crypt Keeper.

(Millennials, the Crypt Keeper was this boney, scary voiced mummified guy who hosted a horror show on HBO.)

“BUT BQB, SHOULD YOU BE SAYING SUCH MEAN THINGS ABOUT UGLY PEOPLE?”

It’s ok.  I’m ugly.  They’re my people.  It’s our thing.  Behind closed doors, we go up to each other and say, “Yo, what up, my uggo?”

You can’t do that to an ugly person if you’re attractive.  That’s OUR thing.

“BUT BQB, I WATCH MOVIES ALL THE TIME AND I ALWAYS SEE UGLY CHARACTERS ON SCREEN.”

Oh sure. Ugly people aren’t completely banned from Hollywood.  But they are tired of being typecast as trolls, demons, monsters, psychotic murderers, homeless people, bloated corpses being investigated by attractive detectives who end up humping because they can’t keep their hands off each other because they’re so damn attractive, hobgoblins, villains, and of course, the sassy office assistant who tells the female lead of a romantic comedy, “Go get him, girlfriend!”

In the Academy’s defense here, this could be an issue that isn’t the movie industry’s fault.  Amidst the #OscarsSoWhite discussion, there is another discussion as to whether or not art imitates life and if so, then perhaps the issue is that Oscar winning movies are often about historical events and sadly, due to racism, many minorities have been kept from taking part in the activities that become fodder for Academy recognized films.

I feel like I speak for ugly people everywhere when I ask society to keep an open mind when it comes to hiring an ugly person.  Sure, you’d rather have a hottie to stare at in your office, but the ugly person will work harder because they know they have to and they might actually help you get shit done.

“NO REALLY, BQB, I HAVE SEEN MOVIES WHERE AN UGLY PERSON WAS THE MAIN CHARACTER!”

Again, we have to make a distinction between ugly characters and the attractive people hired to ugly themselves up with makeup and prosthetics to play them.

Yup.  That’s right.  Even when there’s a role that calls for an ugly person, Hollywood will not call on any one of the many ugly people who, against the advice of their friends and family, travelled to Hollywood in search of fame, ignoring all the cries of, “You’ll never make it!  You’re too ugly!”

Instead, they’ll just take an attractive person and apply some ugly makeup.

For instance, take the 2003 film, Monster, about the life of Aileen Wuornos, a very unattractive female serial killer.

Did Hollywood give an ugly actress her big break?  Nope. They just took inconceivably hot actress Charlize Theron and uglied her up.  Put a shitty hair wig on her, used makeup to add wrinkles and acne and blotches and so on.

And she won an Oscar!  And you know, she’s a great actress and all, but come on.  This chick wakes up every morning looking like a damn Disney princess.  If I were a blue jay I’d want to fly into her room and land on her arm just to listen to her sing and then do all of her housework for her.  That’s how hot she is.

Plenty of roles available for hot chicks.  Hollywood could have let an ugly chick have her fifteen minutes of fame to play an ugly serial killer.

Hollywood does this all the time, often with villains.  It’s like they just ugly up a good looking person and then wink at the audience and say, “Don’t worry folks!  There’s a really good looking person under this get up!  We’d never let an ugly person star in a movie!  Ha ha ha!”

What if a real life nerd defies the odds to achieve greatness?  Surely they’ll allow a nerd to play a nerd, right?

Wrong.  Steve Jobs was the ultimate king of the nerds.  Did they hire a nerd to play him?  Nope.  They just slapped a pair of glasses on Michael Fassbender.  Typical Hollywood.

If I may wax controversial for a moment, “black face” or when a white person applies black makeup and pretends to be black, is a highly offensive practice and rightly so.

As an ugly person, I don’t like it when attractive people walk around in “ugly face.”  That fake ugly face does not give the attractive person any insight into the suffering of the ugly.  Everyone knows attractive people in ugly face are still good looking under there.  They’re still getting invited to the party anyway.

WHAT ABOUT BEHIND THE SCENES OSCARS?

They don’t count.  We fully understand that Hollywood will allow you to work behind the scenes as a director, or a cinematographer or a writer even if you’re a total mutant.  My hat goes off to them.  In today’s economy, it is hard to get a job at McDonald’s if you’re an ugly person, so ugly people have really pulled off a hat trick if they’re allowed to do anything at all in the film industry.

But I’m talking about putting more ugly people on screen so that the nation’s vast supply of ugly people will learn to love themselves, ugliness and all.

WHAT ABOUT DEMOGRAPHICS?

According to the Fake Institute for Bogus Statistics, attractive people make up a mere twenty-percent of all movie going audiences.

That’s because attractive people have so many better options for a Saturday night.  When surveyed, attractive couples stated that instead of watching a movie, they’d rather go sky diving, or white water rafting, or skinny dipping, or go for a frolic in a field of daisies without a care in the world, or lie on a beach and make love with one another, completely oblivious to the waves crashing all around them, or travel to a third world nation and take a selfie with a starving child so they can slap it up on Facebook and pretend that they care, or attend any of the millions upon millions of parties they are invited to or have thrown in their honor per year.

Good looking people just do not have time for movies unless they’re starring in them.

Ugly people make up the remaining 80 percent.  When surveyed as to why they enjoy movies so much, they said that they prefer to remain in the dark like the C.H.U.D.s that they are, that movies provide a form of escapism that helps them forget about the horrible lives they live as ugly people, that romance films, in particular, allow them to fantasize about what it would be like to be in a relationship because God knows no one is asking them out on a date because they’re too ugly, and finally, they have a lot of free time to spend at the movies because they’re so ugly that no one wants to make love to them in the crashing waves of a sandy beach or frolic through a field of daisies with them.

ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Yes and no.  First, yes, I get Hollywood’s side.  They’re in a visual business. They sell escapism.  I go to movies to escape from the low level of life my ugliness causes me.  I go to movies so I can pretend to be one of the attractive people on screen.  I don’t want to pretend to be ugly because I already am.

Yup.  Little known secret.  Even ugly people discriminate against ugly people.  Most ugly people have convinced themselves their transformation into an attractive person is just around the corner so they better not associate with ugly people and hold out for all the attractive people coming their way once they deuglify themselves.  So many ugly people waste their time home alone when they could be together, enjoying one another’s ugly company.

 

Ugly people must stand up and inform the public about this outrage in a productive manner.  They can’t rely on the news media to do it for them.  Have you watched the news lately?  Every anchorman looks like a perfect haired, square jawed, straight teeth having Mitt Romney looking bastard and every reporter is a Hot Ass Blonde Chick like the one who, to her credit, saved my life during last year’s East Randomtown Zombie Apocalypse.

The attractive people in the news media either don’t understand or don’t care about the plight of the ugly.

IS ATTRACTIVE PRIVILEGE REAL?

Yes, and not just in Hollywood but everywhere.  Attractive people have no clue how many doors to the good life magically open up for them just because they’re easy on the eyes.

Attractive people can ask someone out on a date and instantly get a yes, not a “I think I have to wash my hair that night” or “I have to take my cat to the podiatrist” or even worse, “I’ll get back to you” and then they don’t get back to you.

Do you know what attractive men reported as the number one source of their injuries last year?  Broken ribs caused by throngs of hot women throwing themselves at them.

Do you know what ugly men reported as the number one source of their injuries last year?  Pepper spray blasts to the face from attractive women they just said hello to.

Do you know what attractive women reported as the number one source of their injuries last year?  “Selfie Finger.”  Searing finger pained caused by taking too many selfies because they know they’re hot and they’re addicted to all the likes they get for their duck faced photos on social media.

Do you know what ugly women reported as the number one source of their injuries last year? Suffocation under enormous piles of cats.  So very many cats.

Attractive privilege is even prevalent in the workplace.  An ugly person could write a report on how the company’s product, if arranged in a certain way, could be used as a cure for cancer, saving countless lives and earning the company trillions and still get chewed out for interrupting the meeting with his/her ugly face.

Meanwhile, attractive people can just show up late, openly admit they didn’t do shit on the big project, and still get promoted.  The boss will say something to the effect of, “You’re such a straight shooter, attractive person!  I like it!  Lunch is on me!”

Note all this information comes from the Fake Institute for Bogus Statistics.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The vast majority of movie fans are ugly C.H.U.D.s who immerse themselves in film because their lives suck due to their atrocious appearances.

Yet, most unfairly, ugly people of all ethnicities and backgrounds are consistently denied Oscar consideration.

This February, little ugly children will tune into the Oscars and not see anyone who looks as ugly as they are, leaving them with the message that they aren’t welcome in Hollywood.

And sure, you might say, that’s good that they get that message early and get the idea of fame out of their heads so they can grow up and use all the time they aren’t spending on dates that no one wants to go with them on, on studying hard to become doctors, lawyers, scientists, professionals, heads of state and so on.

But, that would be missing the point.  Ugly people can’t help their ugliness. It isn’t their fault that God spent a little extra time baking some people, and took others out of the oven a little too early.

#OscarsSoPretty is an actually thing.  I didn’t make it up.  Ugly people have taken to Twitter to make their voices heard, mostly because they have nothing better to do since no one is asking them out on a date.

Ugly lives matter.  Attractive privilege is real.  End ugly discrimination and nominate a genuine, bonafide ugly person in 2017.