The winner of a special award at the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles tomorrow could well be Sacheen Littlefeather. She does not have a supporting role in Erin Brockovich nor does she vanquish wild animals in Gladiator, but her place in the Oscars' history is already assured. She was the woman who, in 1973, appeared on behalf of Marlon Brando, a winner for his performance in The Godfather, and rejected the award in protest against Hollywood's treatment of native Americans.
This year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is running a competition to discover "My favourite Oscar memory" and asking members of the public to vote by clicking on the "fun and games" section of oscar.com. The results will be announced just in advance of the ceremony itself, and the spectacular intervention of the woman who described herself as Sacheen Littlefeather has been included as one of 15 contenders, along with rather less political moments such as Roberto Benigni climbing over the seats to receive his prize for Life Is Beautiful in 1999, Cuba Gooding Jnr's enthusiastic acceptance of the best supporting actor award in 1995 and the streaker who appeared behind David Niven in 1974. While Littlefeather (she is described on the official Oscar site as the Mexican-American actress Maria Cruz) may not have imagined that her intervention would one day appear in the "fun and games" section of an Oscar competition, the fact that it is recognised as a possible favourite memory is encouraging.
Barely a day seems to pass now when an award ceremony is not screened on television. If we had a dollar for every "humbled" and "honoured" and for every time God had been credited with playing a part in the winning of this or that prize, we would be able to start our own award ceremony. Over the past few years, the chance to use the occasion to make a point - any point - seems to have been almost lost.
During this year's Emmy music awards in Los Angeles, the musician Robbie Robertson, formerly of The Band, was able to slip in a reference to Leonard Peltier, the native American many feel to have been wrongly imprisoned for the last quarter of a century for the murder of two FBI agents and whose supporters had campaigned for a pardon from Bill Clinton. He was not, suggested Robertson at the Emmys, "Marc Rich" enough to win a pardon. In the Golden Globes earlier this year, George Clooney used his award for his role in O, Brother Where Art Thou? to make a witty "confession" that he was the illegitimate love-child of the sternly rightwing and anti-abortion new US attorney general, John Ashcroft. The year after Littlefeather's appearance, Bert Schneider and Peter Davis, the producer and director of the award-winning documentary Hearts and Minds, used their prize to talk about the war in Vietnam and read a telegram from the Vietcong delegation to the Paris peace talks. But since then the edge has largely gone and it seems a long time since a genuinely provocative acceptance speech was made on Oscars' night.
Winners are kept under tight reins in both content and time. Gone are the days when Greer Garson could speak for 10 minutes, as she did after winning for her portrayal of Mrs Miniver in 1942. Now the swelling orchestral music will cut off the wordier speakers after 45 seconds and so anxious are the organisers for short and sweet addresses that they are offering a free television set to the makers of the briefest speeches; although offering a free telly to some of the richest people in the world may seem a bit like offering a chocolate to a crouching tiger to persuade it not to eat you.
Could this year be different? Already there is news that the red carpet pre-ceremony session might be enlivened by people protesting George Bush's dodgy victory in Florida last year. Veteran funster and campaigner Bob Kunst is arriving tomorrow morning to award Bush an Oscar for "best performance in a coup" and to warn Hollywood that a "new McCarthyism" is coming.
This week Norah Vincent, a commentator in the LA Times, urged gay and lesbian actors to use the occasion to come out, arguing that thousands of gay teenagers are taking their lives every year out of isolation and desperation. "Imagine what it meant when Rock Hudson was outed," she wrote, "and finally boys whose fathers had ridiculed them as sissies could point to this archetype of masculinity and say, he and I are the same ... C'mon, Hollywood, show us you're not just limousine liberals. Stand up and be counted."
The awards ceremony takes place this year in the shadow of two potential strikes which could stop filming for months and dramatically cut the choices for next year's ceremony. The writers' strike will start on May 2 and the actors' the following month unless a settlement is reached in the meantime. The predictions are gloomy. So the ceremony could provide either side with an opportunity to advance their case before the world and they are being urged from the wings to take it.
One film that could win a bunch of Oscars is Traffic. Will it really be possible for one of the Traffic winners not to make a reference to the subject on which the film is based, the American "war on drugs" which has imprisoned a generation of young black men, seen 400,000 people locked up at present for non-violent possession of drugs and now threatens to spill into bloodiness and environmental destruction in Colombia? One imagines not.
Taking such steps requires some courage, of course. It is not easy to risk the mockery of commentators and the ire of organisers by pouring some spice into the sugar bowl. But whoever breaks ranks will win the gratitude of a television public that is mature enough to take it as a given that the winners love their mums, dads, spouses and agents, although not necessarily in that order, and thus do not need to be reminded of the fact. One prays that this year's winners will avoid thanking the Almighty. As that fine actor Matthew Broderick (why no nomination for his supporting role in You Can Count On Me?) said in this newspaper a couple of weeks ago: "I don't like it when someone thanks God. I always thought God should be busier than to do the Oscar fix."
From drugs policies to stolen elections, from racism to industrial action, from miscarriages of justice to the Zapatistas, there is no shortage of candidates for a nod from the stage. And if winners want to make sure they will be remembered for ever they can always dedicate their prize to "Fidel, Saddam, Yasser and Gaddafi.... Thank you - and goodbye."
(I would like to thank David Leigh for commissioning this article and having faith in it during the long, dark nights of the soul; Prudence Hone and Cathryn Atkinson, who subbed it, for their humbling generosity of spirit; the editor for his inspirational belief in this project and the printers for being the best printers in the world. I feel blessed.)
Preview the Oscars and follow tomorrow's ceremony live at theguardian.com/film/oscars 2001
