In 1979 Johnny
Carson hosted the Oscars for the first of five times in six years. In his
opening monologue he gave one of the most memorable quotes in the shows
history.
“Welcome to the
Academy Awards, two hours of sparkling entertainment spread out over a
four-hour show.”
It’s worth noting
that while today Carson is considered one of the greatest hosts in the history
of the Academy Awards, at the time his performance was viewed by critics as
disappointing and mediocre. That was hardly strange: from the 1970s until Billy
Crystal hosted the Oscars for the first time in 1990, the opinions of critics
about the Oscars was so universal you almost wondered if they wrote their
reviews before the actual ceremony. Even in the Silver Age of Cinema (the
1970s) the Oscars were viewed as a mediocrity, self-indulgent and overlong.
As someone who has
been seriously watching the Academy Awards for nearly thirty years and has been
studying their history for nearly as long, I know how many changes that they
have made to every aspect of them just in this century. It used to be the last
Monday night in March; it’s moved from February to March countless times in the
last twenty years and now it’s always on Sundays. Its start time has been
moving backward, first to 8:30 P.M., then 8pm and this year to 7 pm. Starting
in 2008, it has moved the number of nominees for Best Picture from 5 to 10 and
now it fluctuates from eight to ten. It has increased the number of voting
members of color and gender in every category. It has spent the last twenty
years doing everything in its power to make itself more ‘relevant” hiring
comedians such as Jon Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres to host, and on more
disastrous occasions, James Franco and Anne Hathaway and (just as horrible)
Seth MacFarlane. It’s had no host at all three years in a row. It has
increasingly been dropping dead weight over the years. Some of it we can live
without – all of the tribute sections to how great movies are; some I have
genuinely disliked, the decision to have lifetime achievement awards and
honorary awards in different ceremonies, sometimes just having highlights of it
and this year not even showing that. Only the ‘In Memoriam’ segment remains.
None of these
changes, whether cosmetic or deeper, have ever made anybody happy. The people
who complain the loudest are the ‘traditionalists’ who look on any change to
the Oscars as some kind of violation the way some people consider desecrating
the American flag. Even Roger Ebert was not immune to these decisions: he
called the decision to increase the number of nominated movies as destruction
of the Academy’s integrity. This is laughable in a way that so much of the
jokes on Oscar night never are because even if you set aside the institutional
racism, sexism and all the other isms that have plagued the Oscars to argue
that the Academy Awards is the ultimate authority of great films has always
been questionable. This is the same organization that genuinely believed The
Greatest Show on Earth and Around the World in 80 Days were films
deserving of being called the Best Picture of the Year, decided that Gandhi was
deserving of Best Picture but E.T. wasn’t and truly believed Crash was
a better film than Munich or Good Night & Good Luck. (I
never liked Brokeback Mountain. Let’s keep on point.)
But the one
constant in my life for the past twenty years is that none of this has changed
the masses opinions of the Academy Awards ceremony itself one iota. I
mean, let’s consider this year. The show ran so efficiently that it actually
finished early. Has that ever happened in the history of the Oscars? The
ceremony had pomp, circumstance and some genuine humor throughout. Ryan
Gosling’s performance of ‘I’m Just Ken’ went viral probably while it was going
on. The awards show had no dead time; had only one, maybe two political
moments. It did everything critics have been asking the Oscars to do for years.
And it had the highest ratings of any Oscar show since the pandemic.
And you know the
kindest reviews I’ve read for it anywhere basically amount to “It was okay. For
the Oscars.” ( I’ve read nastier reviews
for the record, but I’ll get to the specifics later on. )
For twenty years
my expectations for the Oscars have never been that high. Perhaps it’s because
my focus has been so much more on TV the last twenty years that I don’t take it
as personally as I do say the Emmys or the Golden Globes. But now that I’m
established as a critic I think its time we ask a question that as far as I
know has never truly been asked: why do the Oscars, as entertainment, have such
a terrible reputation no matter what they do?
It's actually a
question I think we as critics need to ask about awards shows as entertainment
overall. What standard are critics using to measure whether an awards show is ‘good’?’
It sure as hell has nothing to do with the awards that are given or even most
of the nominated films or shows. Critics have spent their entire lives always
arguing that the awards shows have been nominated the wrong things for decades;
if anything, they spend more time and energy arguing about the people who aren’t
nominated then the ones that are. Monday morning quarterbacking for any awards
show begins the hour after the nominees are announced and, particularly when it
comes to the Oscars, will go on years, even decades after the awards are given.
This isn’t really
a shock because we all have opinions about what we like and what we don’t. As someone
who is as much a fan of television as he is a critic, I take it very personally
when the Emmys don’t nominate series or actors that I think are deserving and
choose shows and performers I dislike. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I
have held grudges for years about Game of Thrones and at a certain point
turned against favorites like Veep in its later years. But that never
stopped me from watching the Emmys even if none of my favorites were contending
or trying to enjoy the awards for what they were.
Maybe that’s why I
view awards show through a different lens then so many of my fellow critics.
Part of me genuinely feels that the awards show should be about the awards and
the winners. I acknowledge the general meaningless of the event but maybe its
because I know at the end of the day have more importance to the nominees and
winners than the average viewer. Perhaps
that’s why I don’t mind if it takes more than thirty seconds for a winner to
give their speech; they’ve earned their moment in the spotlight, they shouldn’t
have to care so much about whether the show runs long.
But the rest of
the world doesn’t see it that way. And it actually brings up a different
question for me. What does the average viewer tune into the Academy
Awards for? It can’t be because they care about the films or actors nominated.
It’s been one of the great problems the Oscars has always had that they will
always nominate the kind of movie that few people end up seeing – or in some
cases, can easily see. The fact that the ratings for the Oscars were so high
was no doubt because of the Barbenheimer phenomena. Historically ratings for
the Oscars are generally higher when a box office hit is among the major Best
Picture contenders: the highest rated Academy Awards was in 1998 when Titanic
was the big winner. But that was an aberration and even the average critic
knows it.
Is it to see the
movie stars? A nice idea but not one that really holds up that well. Most of
the awards that the Oscars give are technical awards and I find it hard to
believe that average viewer would tune in because they wanted to see Ahnold and
Danny DeVito give the editing awards. Hell, most time the presenters are kept
under wraps until the night of the ceremony.
Perhaps some of it
is the passion of watching a live ceremony which does still hold some power in
an era where everything is streaming or taped. But even that seems to be mired
in the idea of some kind of schadenfreude that we will either see something
disgraceful or horrible, such as the case of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.
This actually
brings me to an article I read a week ago from the Marxist publication Jacobin.
The ‘film critic’ chose to shit on the entire Oscars for being conventional,
humdrum, and of course, a celebration of capitalism. The writer was also pissed
that in the midst of this live show, no one bothered to make a controversial
political statement about world affairs. This critic chose to say the best
Oscar moment came when Vanessa Redgrave, upon winning Best Supporting Actress
for Julia, chose to make her entire speech about Israel and Palestine –
and was nearly booed off the stage.
If the only reason
anything exists for you is the idea of a public spectacle that fits your
political leanings I guess the Oscars is the place to find it. That this critic
had to go back more than forty-five years is telling; that she chose to make
this one rather than highlight Sacheen Littlefeather in 1973 when Marlon Brando
declined the Oscar is telling. Redgrave’s remarks were considered virulently anti-Semitic
at the time and she hasn’t attended a major awards show since despite
nominations for Oscars and Emmys over the last forty years but you know, at
least she used her platform to preach a cause this particular critic believed
it and we all know that’s what matters.
Anyway those
moments have been scarce for decades and they’re not likely to come back soon
and honestly, if your watching a ceremony that supposed to be about escapism I
don’t think it helps if the bubble is punctured.
So are critics
watching Oscars to see ridiculous, humiliating spectacles? Do they want to see
Snow White dance with Rob Lowe, ridiculous musical numbers by Debbie Allen,
dehumanizing songs by Seth McFarlane – and if they ‘only’ get an awards show
they’re disappointed? They loathed all of those aspects of the awards show over
the years but they’re often just as hostile when they don’t happen. They always
complain the Oscars are too long and bloated, but they knew that going in and its
not as if they care even when they finish relatively early or even on time. And
they all criticize the speeches as being self-serving and self-indulgent as if
the idea of Oscars is based in some kind of altruistic charity rather than
involves giving out a gold-plated statue.
Is because of the
nitpicking nature that seems to fill the hearts of far too many of my fellow
critics? Are they genuinely the kind of people who think that unless every
single award is given to who they consider the right person is that they hold grudges?
I could see film critics holding this position – they give their own awards,
after all – but the average TV critic can’t honestly care if Zone of
Interest won Best Sound over Oppenheimer.
And if the average
critic doesn’t care, why should anyone watch the Oscars at all? Most people
aren’t students of film and certainly not the technical aspects. They couldn’t
care less about cinematography or sound editing, much less name one. (To be
fair, I couldn’t do much better.) Over the years shows like the Emmys and the
Tonys have increasingly given their technical awards in other ceremonies that
air on different nights from the main event. The Oscars are basically the last awards
show that does this – and they’ve been under pressure to remove them to streamline
the show based on the idea that no one wants to hear the speeches of the winner
for Best Visual Effects. They got into a major fight with the Guilds on this
and they lost, but they’re not entirely wrong about their perception of what
they think viewers care about.
Which brings us to
the original question: if you don’t care about the films, the nominated actors,
most of the winners or the speeches, why are you watching the show? And if you are
watching the show as a critic, why are you holding it to the same metric that
you would any other TV show? I realize most of my fellow critics genuinely
believe that all art that is created only matters if they alone can appreciate
it. This is an act of pure ego of course but I’m willing to let that slide.
What I find unfair and unreasonable is how many critics can take a night that
has nothing to do with art and everything to do with the people that make it –
and then constantly find it lacking on artistic standards.
And that’s so
ridiculous I don’t get why no one has ever called them on it. Of course the
Academy Awards isn’t as entertaining or as powerful as the movies its nominating
or giving awards too. It’s not a movie. It is a group of professionals
taking three to four hours out of their nights to give themselves shiny
statues, give speeches thanking each other and most of them going home empty
handed. By definition it involves self-indulgence and self-promotion – the whole
event was created to promote Hollywood. Do you really expect it to be as much
fun as Taylor Swift concert or Game 7 of
the World Series or, hell, Poor Things?
Like every single
aspect of the films they honor, the Oscar ceremony has always been viewed
through the same impossible lens that so many critics have. They don’t know
what the perfect one is, they just know they whatever they see isn’t it. If we
have learned anything from the last twenty years we know that the awards
themselves will never make everyone – or really anyone – happy. The same is
true of the ceremony.
Maybe the only
answer is to stop reviewing them altogether. The Oscars can keep doing
everything it can to make an entertaining show but maybe the critics should
concentrate on the awards and the speeches, not whether they enjoyed the actual
ceremony. There’s a certain logic to it – this night is supposed to be about
the people who win the awards. We might as well be willing to report that,
considering that we’ll spend eternity arguing that they didn’t deserve in the
first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment