The Academy Awards are on! And, for reasons unclear even to myself, I am drawn to theses fatuous festivities like a white zombie to Bela Lugosi’s satanic sugar mill. People throw parties for the Oscars, invite people on their A list over, get Brazilian about it—it’s a sort of New Year’s Eve of pop cult, having in its favor the postmodern virtues of being both camp and solemn. The Oscars are a national event, a yearly rite that, with its competing factions and heated debates over non-choices, rivals the elections.

Speaking of which, if they are all that darn important to our culture, how come we don’t get to vote on them? Who are these gnomes of the Academy, anyway? A bunch of old hacks, producers of terrible crap movies, doddery actors and minor functionaries who’ve weaseled their way up the ladder so creepily that no one can quite explain how they went from taking the minutes of the meetings in the fifties to being head of the Academy. It’s a shocking business—a cabal of old farts, of Zitatenfresser ("citation-chewers") deciding on our collective national dreams! In truth, though, we kinda like the whole mysterioso business of "the Academy," the Unseen Ones voting on this stuff—grown men in funny hats (if we’re lucky), wheezing, chanting over scraps of paper, consulting ouija boards and gross receipts.

Earlier in the evening I watched the Independent Film Spirit Awards. They were held in a big tent, seemed more egalitarian and relaxed than the Big Show coming up, and the presenters were certainly funnier and hipper—PeeWee Herman, James Woods, Jenna Rolands, and John Waters ("Get more out of life, go see a crap movie"). Javier Bardem saying independent movies were the only ones he liked to go to in Madrid was interesting to hear and Ellen Burstyn’s speech about movies reflecting humanity back to itself was uplifting (or would be if I could remember what she actually said). (Although Laura Linney really should have got both awards for her uncanny performance in "You Can Count On Me.")

There were a lot of great quirky movies nominated—and wonderfully odd documentaries, too (Mark Suger’s Dark Days about the tunnel people and Keep the River on Your Right about a gay Jewish cannibal)—but the odd thing about the Independent Film awards was that many of the nominees cropped up again at the Oscars—Traffic, Requiem for a Dream, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—and a bunch of these supposedly die-hard independistas were already signed up to sell out to the big studios. Or, like Jim Jarmusch, already had—what was Ghost Dog? Am I missing something? And to hear Jarmusch and Forrest Whittaker prattling on about the dopey flick as if it were were some mystic revelation was baffling and irritating. Rationalization is a rampant vice, but when it gets involved with movies it becomes a form of Olympic Self-delusion. Maybe it was just too subtle for me. Yeah, that’s probably what it is.

Feeling pious that I had communed with the free spirits of the independent film community, I switched over to the Oscars, and, instead of feeling superior to the whole goofy business, I initially found myself pulled in willy-nilly by the sheer Krantzian glitz of the whole thing. Stars getting out of limos! (People I barely know the names of, mind you.) The vast Disneyesque red carpet! The Egyptian monumentality of the Oscar statues on the outside of the Shrine Auditorium! Wolfgang Puck’s almost Dada object, the Oscar-shaped caviar hors d’oeuvres! The drooling crowds straining at the ropes! Flashbulbs! Bizarre tuxedos and gossamer gowns! Jennifer Lopez’s dress could easily have come out of the Emperor’s New Clothes Salon.

The Oscars have a built-in boredom mechanism in their favor that makes even the tritest speech seem almost eloquent. In that regard, awards ceremonies have a lot in common with airport waiting areas. Sort of endless and bland—plus commercials. Although some of the commercials were pretty spectacular, the Pepsi extravaganza with Britney Spears, the fireflies and the Internet thing. But using Martin Luther King’s "I have a dream" speech in an Alcatel commercial was just crass—have they no shame?

On to Humpty Dumpty’s annual self-coronation. Spare your outrage, o my brothers and sisters, at the pusillanimous choices, the elevation of mediocrities and the fawning celebration of over-paid panderers to the groundlings. This is not the time or place for paying homage to the best and brightest, the innovators, and mad geniuses—that’s for history and tiny theaters. What the Oscars resemble most of all is one long commercial. And, in fact that’s what it is—paid programming for the movie industry disguised as an awards ceremony. Hollywood is a fishing village that has only one export, and, like some ghastly, over-rouged giantess foolishly admiring her own enhanced reflection, the Academy chooses those movies that most resemble itself. The revulsion you feel, comrades, is at those monstrous glossy Revlon lips kissing their own powdered buttocks.

Big, over-blown spectacles with obscene budgets win the day. Do you seriously believe that Russell Crowe is the greatest actor in the world? He sat through the monotonous thing with such Senecan stoicism you felt he hadn’t quite shed his Maximus persona. Was Gladiator the best movie of last year or Steven Soderbergh the best director? I don’t think so. Julia Roberts—who I don’t think is a great actress, either (although a perfect fit in Erin Bra-ckovich)—was utterly disarming in her acceptance speech.

My favorite Hollywood movie of last year, The Wonder Boys—about writers and 2,611 page manuscripts, and with wonderful acting—didn’t get the props it deserved. Who could resist Michael Douglas in that pink chenille robe? But at least Bob Dylan won for best song. The shining moment in the whole proceedings, as far as I’m concerned, was Sir Bob’s gnarled face 60 feet high on the screen. Like some reproving ghost from the other side of the earth (he was in Australia) mumbling little rhyming curses as the foppish, decadent, and pompous watched him reverently and vaguely apprehensively. He seemed the embodiment of the authentic in the palace of tinsel, an ancient reminder of mortality and truth.

But, Dylan being Dylan, this, too, was a performance—the best of the whole evening. The man who has given us a coral reef of Dylans—dustbowl singer, street-urchin, son of Ramblin’ Jack, folk messiah, neon Rimbaud, Old Testament prophet, Amish farmer, howdy-neighbor country boy, white-face death's-head mummer, Shropshire Lad with flowers in his hat, Christ-like Bob, born-again Bob, Hasidic Bob, Late-Elvis Dylan with the big WWF belt, Endless-Tour Dylan, Living National Treasure Dylan—had come up with yet another mesmerizing persona. (Andrew Oldham: "When you’ve played Sydney, Australia, for the 700th time, you need a persona, darling.") With his skinny mustache and gaunt face, he looked like Vincent Price, some old silent movie actor, the gypsy who tells you the day on which you’ll die. It was a revelation to see him burning through the screen at this strange, vulgar, hypocritical event—the Academy Awards being a little like a glorified Wal-Mart—huge, overwhelming, soulless, and yet uncannily incarnating the oxymoronic soul of America.