Op-Ed: L.A. is defined by its streets, strip malls and the softness of its hills. Not by breathless Oscar hype

Earlier this month, one of Hollywood’s biggest agencies, United Talent, canceled its annual Oscar party in favor of a pro-immigration rally at its offices and a $250,000 donation to the American Civil Liberties Union. The news came not long after Iranian director Asghar Farhadi — whose movie “The Salesman” is nominated for foreign language film — revealed that he would not attend the ceremony “even if exceptions” in President Trump’s Muslim travel ban “were to be made for my trip.”

This is as it should be; these are divisive times, and art, or even entertainment, has always been a fulcrum for politics. Still, as anyone who has spent much time living in Los Angeles can tell you, there are other, less consequential reasons for abstaining from Hollywood’s annual party.

I am not a fan of the Oscars. For me, it’s a nonevent not unlike other secular American rituals (think Super Bowl). I go out of my way to ignore it, from the nominations to the acceptance speeches. I don’t handicap the categories. I don’t go to Oscar-watching parties.

When I think about the Academy Awards, I think of the road closures that will make certain crosstown routes impassible for a couple of weeks. I think of all the money spent, and all the better uses for it. I am exhausted by the endless media cycle, breathless with hype and conjecture — a horse-race mentality in which winning is the only thing that counts.

That’s the case with all awards, which is why they leave me skeptical. They reduce art and culture to the level of a contest, when this is not how either is supposed to work. “Good writing glories all writers,” critic Malcolm Cowley famously insisted. “You are not in competition.” That’s the ethos I prefer.

Adding Hollywood to the mix only ups my animus.

“The very nicest thing Hollywood can possibly think of to say to a writer,” Raymond Chandler grumbled in the 1940s, “is that he is too good to be only a writer.” Chandler knew his subject; the author of some of Los Angeles’ most totemic novels (“The Big Sleep,” “The Long Goodbye”), he also was a screenwriter, working on “The Blue Dahlia” and “Double Indemnity.”

Chandler’s lament is echoed by other writers — William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald — who came to Hollywood for money, only to leave less than fulfilled.

On the one hand, the come-ons of the movie business make it a quintessential Southern California signifier; as far back as the railroad wars of the 1880s, Los Angeles has been a boomtown. On the other hand, Hollywood is not quintessential enough.

Yes, the industry fuels some of our most enduring myths: Los Angeles as the locus of reinvention, a place to be “discovered” or to find yourself. The problem with myths, however, is not that they are untrue, but that they are never true enough.

The fans in the red-carpet bleachers, or the stars (a terrible term, as if actors occupied some sort of firmament) in their finery — they suggest to me a desperation that manifests itself in spectacle. “It was a mistake to think them harmless curiosity seekers. They were savage and bitter … and had been made so by boredom and disappointment,” Nathanael West writes in “The Day of the Locust,” describing a crowd that riots at a movie premiere.

When I first moved to Southern California, friends on the East Coast used to ask whether I saw celebrities everywhere. How to respond? I wasn’t looking for them, and in any case, they did not live in my neighborhood. At the time, I didn’t know the city well enough to articulate how far beside the point their question was, but now I see it through a clearer lens.

For me, L.A. is defined by boulevards and sidewalks, strip malls and duplex apartments, the crumpled softness of the hills, the crispness of the sky after it rains. It is a city of regular people and neighborhoods, more than it is one of pageantry and fame.

As for the Oscars — when they come around, they are primarily a nuisance, the kind you put up with if you live in a certain place. I’m reminded of the Boston Marathon, or New Year’s Eve in Times Square. All the years I spent in both those cities, I never went to either; it just wasn’t necessary. The same, I want to say, is true of the Academy Awards.

“I used to like this town … ,” Chandler wrote in “The Little Sister,” published in 1949, “[when] Hollywood was a bunch of frame houses on the interurban line.” It’s been a long time since that description was accurate, but what Chandler is saying is that Hollywood is also just a neighborhood.

That’s the way I think about it too, as a place, rather than an industry. And the gold-plated Oscar? Just another trophy — that is, if you’re an Angeleno like me.

David L. Ulin is a contributing writer to Opinion.

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