It's no longer just glamour and good guys -- the Academy Awards more and more reveal not only ambiguity but outright ugliness. This reflects changes in our attitude toward the world -- and changes in the world itself. PNS commentator Joe Loya is a California writer currently writing a memoir on his experience in prison. His e-mail address is buddhalobo@aol.com.

Hooray for Hollywood?

The Best Picture at the 72nd Academy Awards went to a film about sex, drugs, adultery, homophobia and murder. Young Oscar, who mostly noticed the superficial, is finally determined to see beauty in the profane.

Never before have we seen so many actors nominated for playing morally ambiguous heroes: Tom Cruise was a classic misogynist in "Magnolia," Angelina Jolie won for playing a cruel schizophrenic in "Girl, Interrupted," Denzel Washington played a man convicted of murder in "Hurricane."

Kevin Spacey won Best Actor honors for portraying a man who chases an underage girl in "American Beauty," the Best Picture winner. Annette Bening, who played his wife, was a hyperneurotic soccer Mom and adulteress, a sort of anti-Hepburn heroine who does not go lightly to her fall.

And to drive home the point about complicated heroes, Hilary Swank won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as a girl living as a boy in Nebraska in "Boys Don't Cry."

Hollywood morality tales used to be easy to script: Good guys wore white hats. Bad guys wore black hats. And beauty was so well defined that Oscar night was almost a beauty pageant. (That part of it still occurs on the red carpet during the pre-show.)

But these are morally ambiguous times.

President Clinton was impeached for chasing an almost underage intern. The Pope recently apologized for the moral lapses of the Holy Church. Even the blood drinking rock group KISS -- known to some as Knights In Satan's Service -- made a wholesome Pepsi commercial for the Academy Awards. The bad is sometimes good and ugly.

Europeans have always criticized Americans' naivete. They say our response to sexual scandal is silly, a denial of the postmodern predicament. But recently our films have portrayed the worst qualities of dysfunctional families in a way that suggests Americans do recognize the tragic beauty in the human condition.

Four of the five Best Picture nominees were morality tales through and through. While Americans clearly don't want House Republicans shoving rules for personal behavior down their throats, they appreciate the muddier morality tale, subversive films unsettling in a down beat way.

"American Beauty" wagged Lester and his wife in front of us, beautifully flawed people who violate the commandments and are essentially punished by one of God's soldiers.

"The Cider House Rules" gave us a young innocent hero who, like St. Peter, had to betray a friend and compromise one of his fundamental principles before he could become a compassionate leader.

"The Insider" and "The Green Mile" are not simply stories of good versus evil, but complicated explorations of the sometime collaboration between good and evil.

Feel-good tales don't work on us anymore. We want our expectations upended as they are in real life. We don't want characters with the certainty of Charleton Heston's Moses. We want the warm hearted hero doctor in "The Cider House Rules" who is also an ether addict, sometimes high in the back room.

Pollsters say Americans want authenticity in their heroes. Billy Crystal, host of the Oscars, made a joke comparing Spacey's obsession with a young girl in "American Beauty" to the president's behavior. And that may be the true luster of "American Beauty." We Americans knew we weren't sending Mr. Smith to Washington when we elected President Clinton -- twice.

We seemed to hope for good, but allow room for an occasional romantic disappointment. Like our elections, our best cinema has come to resemble our complicated American hearts.

The real beauty of the American Academy Awards this year was that Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for portraying Lester, a hero who was a trinity of good, bad and ugly -- and we really really liked him.