Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Meryl Streep- Old vs. New

 Meryl Streep's acceptance speech 


In a very similar situation to Christopher Plummer's Oscar win, Meryl Streep unexpectedly won Best Actress this past Sunday for her role in "The Iron Lady". Streep was also against stiff, not to mention, younger competition for this award, and after not winning an Oscar in 29 years, it was a definite surprise to her and those watching. Streep has been nominated for 17 Oscars, which is a huge accomplishment in itself, and took away her third with this year's award. However, following the same argument that Tyler discussed with Plummer, why was Meryl Streep considered "the underdog"? Our society likes to believe that new and fresh actors and actresses can no doubt outperform the older ones in the business. However, 82 year old Christopher Plummer and 62 year old Meryl Streep can definitely speak against this. We need to consider that just because Meryl Streep hadn't won an Oscar in 29 years, didn't mean she should've been ruled out to win, and that 'new' isn't always better.

The following article discusses some of the unexpected events in the 2012 Oscars.  
Read article!

1 comment:

  1. I think the reason that Meryl was seen as an underdog was because of her past history with Oscar nominations. Because her ratio of wins to nominations, most people just expected more of the same. This also happened with Woody Allen, who has also been nominated many times consistently over the years and won his first Oscar since the 70s this time around. I think these occurrence has something to say about the way that people gage success. In immediate context, people tend to favor new, edgy, or breakout performances, but in the end incredible actors like Meryl who have built a career of great performances truly come out on top.

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