The decision by the board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to bestow an honorary award on filmmaker Elia Kazan at its annual Oscar ceremony March 21 is an act with definite political implications. Kazan, the director of 19 feature films between 1945 and 1976, was one of the most prominent figures to turn informer during the anticommunist witchhunts of the early 1950s. After a first appearance before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities HUAC January 14, 1952 at which he refused to name names, Kazan reappeared on April 10 and identified eight people who had been members of the Communist Party with him in the mid1930s, along with certain party functionaries. His testimony damaged the careers and lives of a number of individuals and helped consolidate the Hollywood blacklist. Kazans decision to collaborate with the HUAC inquisitors epitomized the devils bargain into which a significant section of the filmmaking community and the American liberal intelligentsia as a whole entered during this period.The Academy boards January 7 decision, by a unanimous vote, to give Kazan an award has been for the most part warmly received in the media. David Freeman in the Los Angeles Times January 19, in a piece entitled Kazans Works May Now Outweigh His Transgressions, writes: This award would have been unlikely without the end of the Cold War. Communism as an international force is spent. HUAC itself seems out of a blackandwhite past. Though there are divisive issues today, the economy is good; Hollywoods dominion in popular entertainment has never been stronger. Its a good time to set the house in order.

Website: http://wsws.org/articles/1999/feb1999/kaz1-f20.shtml