Gather
round children and hear of days long ago when you called a number
to find out the time and learned to square-dance in gym class.
Back then, there was a TV genre called a “variety show”—a
sparkly extravaganza of hammy jokes and jazz-handsy chassee-left-kick-ball-change
dance routines. Dance routines? Heck, there were skating routines
. . .
By
the late 1970s, the variety show faded from our TVs, though
elements of it remain to this day. The Academy Awards—which
began life as an after-dinner awards ceremony and gradually
morphed into a more contemporary type of variety show—are
still with us.
But
for how long? In the 1990s, 40 million+ people watched the Academy
Awards. By 2021, that number dropped to a paltry 10 million,
a record low for the Oscars and one of the most precipitous
ratings drops in TV history. In this post-Virus year, they only
regained five million more viewers.
We
know why the Oscars are a diminishing brand. TV is where the
talent is and audiences have followed. Hollywood makes too many
superhero movies and the rest are films most of us lack the
patience to sit through. But this year was meant to be a turnaround,
when Oscars would maneuver out of this death-spiral, pull up
on the throttle and soar to new heights. Or is it push down
on the throttle? Either way, it didn’t happen.
Instead,
they rolled out a tedious, at times cringe-worthy and interminable
broadcast that recalled the famous description of trench warfare
as “endless boredom punctuated by moments of terror.”
Worst of all, they were tacky. Amy
Schumer’s dress perfectly summarizes the
low-rent tenor of the evening . . .
This
was a People’s Choice dress at what’s supposed to
be Hollywood’s classiest night. Puerile and unserious,
the embellishment of a cheap glittery bow and racy décolletage
could not overcome its banality. FTR, this is what a serious
Oscars-worthy gown featuring a bow looks like . . .
See
the difference? Audrey’s dress is unmistakably designer.
She wore it 47 years ago and it would still be fashionable today.
Amy’s looks like something on the sale rack at TJ Maxx.
The
night’s lineup of jokes were as juvenile as Amy’s
dress. Did Jason Momoa actually make a burp joke—and not
a very funny one? I laughed harder back in elementary school
when Glen Someone-or-other (can’t remember his last name)
drank a liter of Coke in the playground then let out a 26-second
belch (his friend timed it). You watch—next year we’ll
get fart jokes and maybe a sponsorship tie-in with Beano.
With
its double standard, Regina Hall’s running gag about bagging
one of the eligible bachelors in attendance missed its landing
by a mile. Just imagine this joke in reverse? Heads would explode.
Her onstage groping wasn’t just adolescent but plainly
weird. Louis B. Mayer had to be spinning in his grave. Or maybe
he was thinking ‘if anyone’s gonna paw the talent,
it had better be me!’ (Boom! Tish!)
What
happened? Did producers dumb things down to please the casual
sensibilities of a younger, more desirable viewer cohort? It’s
as though the Queen, in an effort to relate to her following
of superannuated, Coronation Street-watching devotees, took
her walkabout in elastic-waist pants and a pair of these.
Was
it pandering to a younger crowd when the hosts bragged about
not having watched any of the films? (Like . . . ermigaaaad
. . . like, that’s so much work!) Or the cheery dance
number as In Memoriam scrolled in the background (Ermigaad.
Dying is such a downer.). Or all those Marvel promotions shoehorned
throughout? Even the editing had an amateurish feel. This crescendo
of shabbiness and vulgarity rose to its peak with the Slap Heard
Around the World.
The
volume of interest in the Will Smith-Chris Rock brouhaha put
a lot of noses out of joint. Apparently it indicated our unchecked,
civilization-ending shallowness or something. That or you were
a sucker for buying it. It was a setup—like Howard Beale’s
onscreen murder in Network.
Ahem.
If I may . . . nobody but nobody connected to that broadcast
wished for the squalid incursion of a scene straight out of
a VIP Beverly Hills nightclub, where someone is always a line
of coke or a shot of Ketel One away from starting a brawl. Like
all spontaneous combustions, this one happened in the blink
of an eye. One second it’s King of Hollywood Will Smith,
glowing triumphantly. The next it’s insecure, incandescent
cuckold Will Smith, ranting and swearing. Then it’s Will
Smith making a simultaneously self-pitying and self-aggrandizing
acceptance speech.
The
Academy hates swearing. Even in the year 2022, it still strives
for the pretense of wholesomeness—perhaps more than ever
in the wake of #metoo. Harvey Weinstein had his hand in 341
nominations. It was at the Academy Awards that Meryl Streep—a
three-time Oscar winner and 21-time nominee—stuck her
nose up Weinstein’s ass by calling him ‘god.’
Like
Sally Field, the Oscars long for us to like them. Why else would
they keep pulling one rabbit after another out of their hat
to please us—including promises to be less white, less
political and less long. Yet they only manage to be less funny,
which is why there’s a growing feeling of ‘burn
it all down’ in the air during awards season.
Asked
for comment on the Slap incident, Fran Liebowitz expressed bewilderment
that the Oscars still exists, comparing it to watching a butter-churning
contest. When the Academy announced it would ban Will Smith
from attending the awards for ten years, Twitter’s hot
take was basically will there be an Academy Awards in ten years?
Also . . . hey Oscars. Millions of us have already imposed voluntary
lifetime bans. On ourselves.
Some
of us are rooting for the Oscars though—and not just for
old time’s sake. They keep movie-makers on their toes,
inspiring them to continue shooting for greatness. Without the
Oscars, Hollywood has no reason to produce anything but sequels,
remakes and board game adaptations. We’ll have one less
reason to swear at the TV when a more deserving film gets picked
over for some Oscar-baity crowd-pleaser.
