By guest contributor Tony Bravo
What’s our problem with Anne Hathaway? Something happened around the Golden Globes when the culture turned against the actress. That first major win of the awards season settled it: her excitement at her victory and laundry list of thank you acknowledgements made us see her as an over eager teacher’s pet that was out to make the rest of us look bad. I’m saying this equally to both sexes so listen up guys that complain about her haircut making her less “bang-able” and girls that vaguely have some feeling that she’s kind of stuck-up. Why can’t we be happy for her when she was so recently in our collective good graces?
The snark on the blogosphere has been epic with each win, culminating Sunday night at the Academy Awards when she took home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in Les Miserable. The complaints all season that her acceptance speeches were too earnest and gushy continued as did the criticism that she was too "actressy” and overeager. No wonder there’s rumors she practiced the speech in the days leading up to the ceremony. It wasn’t the most polished speech of the night but was the universal eye roll on Twitter to her remarks (even the reference to the tragedy of prostitution) really necessary? Even her BREATHING was critiqued as being asthmatic and labored. Then there were the wardrobe critiques. On the topic of her pink Prada gown I'll be the first to say it: the dress had problems. I don’t know if those were actually darts making an unfortunately nippular effect on her dress like the official story goes or an unexpected Beverly Hills cold front as was speculated but let’s put the blame on the stylist where it belongs.
The nastiness over the unfortunate effect was one of the evening’s social media low points. What is this moment in our culture where we seem to be universally gunning for an actress we’ve kept employed in films for a decade? Remember how we all rushed to her defense after the James Franco hosting debacle at the Academy Awards two years ago? We enjoyed her as recently as the summer when she was restoring our vision of Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, what happened?
Is it the Best Supporting Actress Curse? It has been noted, for certain winners, the Best Supporting Actress Oscar brings an ill career wind. Sure, the Cate Blanchetts and Judi Denchs don’t seem to have suffered but for every Penelope Cruz there’s a Marissa Tomei whose career stalled for much of the '90s after a backlash against her win for My Cousin Vinnie. There’s also Mira Sorvino, last seen on Lifetime, and speaking of “last seen” where did Melissa Leo and her maligned potty-mouth go? Let’s not forgot Mo’Nique (although feature films seem to) and other than those Weight Watchers commercials, her song from Dreamgirls on Sunday was the first time we’ve seen Jennifer Hudson in a while. With her win seen as an inevitability, did the bad best supporting actress juju hit early?