Do you remember them?

Jerry Lewis and whatever semblance of celebrity he could cobble together, would entertain the hell out of you for 24 hours straight, and in return you would pledge money to help fight MD.

The shows always took place on Labour Day weekend– when absolutely nothing else happened– and since it was the only thing on TV we watched it like it was a seasonal tradition. Staying up with Jerry was a both a dare and a way to extend the summer. Still, the telethons felt like artifacts from another era, something that was owned by a generation previous to mine.

The Academy Awards have this feel, too, and I watch them mostly for the comforting, predictable sense of nostalgia they always conjure, but I found this year’s edition to be, well, confused. Was it a self-congratulatory ad for a dying industry, or was it stationed at the forefront of a social revolution? Was it about fashion and beauty or was it about it not being about fashion and beauty?

It proved complicated to decipher.

Host Jimmy Kimmel made an opening #MeToo friendly joke about the absurd irony of Mel Gibson starring in a movie called What Women Want.

It was a safe joke, one that picked a target everybody could agree upon, and it got what was almost relieved laughter. It might be hard to imagine now, but Mel Gibson was once a beautiful dream of potential.

Now he is an unredeemable laughing stock.

What was ironic was that in 2000, the year What Women Want came out and made tons of money, Jimmy Kimmel was co-hosting The Man Show. At the time, the slim and woke Oscar host was less slim and less woke, and The Man Show was all about tits. It was about grabbing them by the pussy. It was a white boy frat party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl3wioLmNNY

And yet there was Jimmy Kimmel on Oscar night making jokes about Mel Gibson’s pernicious attitude toward woman while a bejeweled and admiring audience laughed their approval before him.

These moments of dissonance happened throughout the broadcast, the most vivid occurring when Wes Studi, a Cherokee actor you probably recognize but could never name, introduced a montage of military movies.

Clearly the depiction of violent masculinity in this particular climate was considered iffy, and as if to soften that potential for controversy and loss of market share, the production team got a member of an under represented community to introduce this unpopular, but tactically necessary segment. It was calculated, and when Studi opened by saying he was a proud veteran of the Vietnam War, the crowd’s confusion at how to respond was palpable. They no longer knew whether Studi stood for something good or bad, they could not interpret the symbol they were being shown. After the montage ended, and Studi uttered a dose of Cherokee– which at the time could have been either a blessing or curse– the audience opted for a shallow, incoherent applause.

You could also see the once unassailable Meryl Streep– who many believe did not do enough to stop Harvey Weinstein—giving way to the meme-friendly Francis McDormand as moral force and American exemplar. When once beloved comic Dave Chappelle came on stage to a spattering of applause, he found that the comedic power he held as an oppressed minority had been overshadowed by his criticism of #MeToo. The omnipresent and eager Ryan Seacrest, who somehow manages to emit a vibe that simultaneously suggests a Bro and a gay man, found himself snubbed on the red carpet by all the stars in response to an accusation of sexual misconduct levied against him. They were only too eager to nourish themselves on his fawning, promotional interviews before, but now?

And when Annabella Sciorra, Ashley Judd and Salma Hayek took the stage, glittering and beautiful and gazed upon from so many different points of view, it was hard to interpret all the mixed messages that were being sent out into the world.

Were these women brave activists or part of an exploitive one percent? Were they complicit in creating unrealistic expectations for women by  opting for cosmetic surgery, or were they victims of an industry that demanded it from them as if it was a tax for being a woman? Could everything be true at once?

The Jerry Lewis Telethon ended just a few years ago. Over the course of it’s lifetime it raised over 2.5 billion for those fighting MD, but it also did so in an often self-serving and patronizing, if not wholly lurid manner.

In the end, were all those telethons a good released into this world or an evil?

It’s impossible to know, I guess, but it strikes me that nobody is all good or all bad. Each one of us is a riot of contradictions, often engaged in actions that elude our articulation or even understanding. Our lives and character are much more circumstantial and precarious than most of us would care to admit, and we would all be well served to save a little empathetic space in our hearts for those we don’t necessarily understand or agree with.

Everything, really, depends on that.

1. ROCK THE VOTE!!

In an effort to help remind Torontonians that it’s their duty to vote in the upcoming city election on October 27^th, CondomTO would put out a series of prophylactics featuring various City Councilors and Mayoral candidates. Personalities should include:

Rob Ford

David Soknacki

Doug Ford

Karen Stintz

Olivia Chow

Sarah Thomson

2. TORONTO: PROUD OF OUR WILDLIFE!!

This series of condoms would feature some of the urban wildlife that makes Toronto such a distinctive blend between big-city cosmopolitanism and natural green space, also serving as a reminder that animals are our neighbours and partners in city living! Creatures that should be considered for inclusion:

Pigeon

Raccoon

Small dog (As so many Torontonians are apartment dwellers, the city has a preponderance of small dog breeds such as Dachshund, Pug, Yorkshire Terrier, etcetera)

Rat

Squirrel

Bed Bugs

3. CELEBRATE JURASSIC PARK!!

In honour of the Toronto Raptors basketball team’s great run into the playoffs, CondomTO would feature some of the star personalities involved with the team! Suggestions include:

Amir Johnson

The Raptor (Mascot)

Jonas Valanciunas

Kyle Lowry

Drake (Ambassador of team)

Nav Bhatia (Superfan)

The future in which the Spike Jonze directed movie is set is suggested rather than primary visual architecture. It’s familiar but slightly dislocating, men wear High-Waisted pants, such as you might see in the Civil War, the technology is just a little smaller and swifter, and the city in which the film takes place drifts back and forth between a smoggy LA and a smoggy Shanghai.

Saturated in lyrical oranges and ambers, a dreamy, narcotic ambience presides, as if one of remembrance rather than projection, if that makes any sense. Even in the heavy, coarse fabrics of the clothes people wear, or in the forest imagery existing as backdrop in an elevator, you can feel a yearning for something authentic amidst the increasingly spacious and abstract world of technology.

Joaquin Phoenix, sporting the melancholy moustache of another, somehow European era, falls in love with an operating system played by the voice of Scarlett Johansson. He’s probably in every scene in the movie and he’s simply terrific. Gentle, nuanced and empathetic, his performance is the very opposite of the kind of grand scale acting we’ve come to expect from the likes of Christian Bale, and this dose of humble realism is immensely appealing.

The entire movie was appealing, actually, and it felt like relaxing into the lives of friends who were easy to be around. It was intimate but not needy, and it evoked our shared feelings of falling in love, of tumbling into one another and living in those times when everything is golden and funny and precious and even the colour of your partner’s sweater spoke to a greater truth. This was accomplished deftly, in small, perfect ways, and in spite of it being an abstracted, artificial relationship, it was still the most familiar and convincing depiction of love that I’d seen in years, including, of course, the awkward, tender and melancholic drift apart.

Sweet, charming and a little bit sad, it was a fun film to be a part of and it stayed with us, remaining a companionable presence, like an absent friend, as we shared drinks across the street—each one of our minds drifting off to a different point in time, and then happily returning to our present company.