Fair play should trump beauty

PATRICK GOLDSTEIN has a good heart, and once again this year he’s led with it [“Oscar’s Foreign Policy Problem,” Oct. 23]. A key to why Patrick is annually thrown out of sorts by our foreign language category lies in his “Aha” question: Why didn’t the committee that oversees the category at least look at “The Band’s Visit” before disqualifying it?

The assumption underlying that query is that, if the group had seen it and decided that it was a wonderful movie, they would have been happy to set aside any troublesome qualifying rules and usher it straight into the competition (with an implied pre-endorsement by the academy that the other 60 contenders would simply have to deal with).

Wonderful movies shouldn’t be fettered by qualifying rules, and (following the same logic) beautiful women shouldn’t be subject to traffic laws.

Here’s the thing that Patrick keeps missing. Once the judging begins in an artistic competition, it’s absolutely proper for the judges to be biased in favor of excellent work. When you’re rounding up the contenders, though, the criteria for inclusion have to be applied with scrupulous objectivity.

The only question that can ethically be asked is: Has this picture met the qualifying rules? If not, then fair play trumps beauty.

Bruce Davis

Los Angeles

Davis is executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences