I had to give myself a day or so to think about what I wanted to say here in light of the direction the post-Oscars social media conversation has been going. If we’ve learned anything from this year’s Academy Awards (and the awards season in general, I suppose), it’s that you just can’t please everyone. My initial joy that a decent film had finally won Best Picture after years and years of crappy films taking home that final Oscar was dampened a bit when I went online expecting to simply read a few reactions to a host-less show that managed to award at least one prize to each BP-nominated film while still throwing in some surprises–and I was met with drivel and vitriol about the fact that Green Book was named the year’s best film. People’s biggest complaints about Green Book? It’s not racially appropriate. It makes the black character look weaker than the white character. It’s told from the white character’s point of view and, thus, just reconfirms white superiority. The writer said something about Muslims on Twitter years ago. The director flashed someone a couple decades back. The black character’s family wasn’t involved enough and didn’t get any money. It doesn’t follow the actual events closely. And on and on.

My favorite “professional” reaction to Green Book‘s win has to be a quick article churned out by Justin Chang, a critic for the Los Angeles Times (and someone whose film thoughts I don’t ever need to read again). In his article “Oscars 2019: ‘Green Book’ is the Worst Best Picture Winner Since ‘Crash’,” Chang calls Green Book “an embarrassment” and continues to denigrate anyone who likes this film. Perhaps for other movies it is okay for people to have differing opinions, but that doesn’t apply to Green Book, says Chang: “Differences in taste are nothing new, but there is something about the anger and defensiveness provoked by this particular picture that makes reasonable disagreement unusually difficult.” But wait, Chang isn’t done yet. In trying to find a reason for how the Academy could have possibly chosen Green Book for BP, Chang wonders if the Academy’s “taste…isn’t quite as evolved” as its new, more diversified membership and thinks that some nameless “others” might “identify a stubborn strain of Trumpian anti-intellectualism among ‘Green Book’ lovers who dug in their heels in defense of a much-maligned favorite.” Wow.

In case you’re wondering which film Chang would have chosen for BP, BlackkKlansman seems to have been his favorite. Spike Lee’s film won for Writing (Adapted Screenplay) and nothing else Sunday night, but that one win did give Spike his supposedly over-deserved Oscar and allowed him time on the stage to spout politically charged rhetoric that had nothing to do with his film or with thanking people who helped him. And what did Spike do when Green Book won BP? He stormed down the aisle to leave before Dolby Theater staff made him go back to his seat–where he refused to look at the BP winners during their speeches. I hate to tell Spike this, but I don’t think BlackkKlansman was really in contention for BP this year.

Furthermore, if the difference in presentation of race relations between BlackkKlansman and Green Book is what is at issue with most of the dissenters to Green Book‘s win, let’s just look at both films’ final images (spoiler alert!). What you see at the end of BlackkKlansman is two African-Americans pointing guns out a window at a group of ignorant white bigots–followed by actual footage from Charlottesville, Virginia, that is clearly meant to be political propaganda. Green Book, on the other hand, ends with two men, one white and one black, embracing after spending almost an entire movie in a car together, learning about each other as humans–and about the lies and dangers inherent in stereotyping. The white man doesn’t “save” the black man. They each save each other from their different prejudices and incorrect preconceived ideas about race and society. Which of those scenarios sounds like it means to work toward positive racial and social change?

I’m happy to report that most of the feedback on Chang’s article has been negative (for him). One person (who stated he was African American) commented: “I too enjoyed Green Book but I think there are generational differences in how things are looked at now. I see something akin to a celebration of anger among younger people and a rejection of anything positive such as in Green Book which is seen as an artificial sweetener eclipsing realities. Green Book held out the potential that race relations can be positive and that seems to run counter to a narrative many…have. The whole thing strikes me as people who celebrate problems but offer no solutions and oppose those who do.”

What Spike Lee and BlackkKlansman offered the world at the Academy Awards was retribution and more strife–the inflexibility of a desire to push one race down to elevate another, while calling it equality and diversity. Green Book pushes no one down; it only lifts up. Despite the “controversies” that arrived at the Oscars with this film, its message wasn’t diminished as it presents two people, both struggling with their separate issues, who learn in the end that equality really has to do with what Dr. King proclaimed all those years ago: the content of one’s character, not the color of one’s skin.

The 2019 Oscars closed with black and white people sharing the stage together in celebration of a film about love. The Academy finally got it right this year. And I, for one, will be proud to add Green Book to my BP shelf.