Just For Fun: The Importance of Being Oscar
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The Academy Awards ceremony is that one night of the year where film actors and filmmakers get together to celebrate their craft. Well actually there are about a half a dozen other nights where they do this as well: the People's Choice, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, not to mention all the specialized award get togethers from everyone from the cinematographers to the publicists, oh, and then there are the many major film festivals around the world, various world premiers, a multitude of personal appearances flogging the film and multi-million dollar campaigns to sell the films, and the DVDs, to the general public, and if there is enough buzz, to those who vote in these big awards ceremonies.
I actually sat through a couple of hours of the Oscars last night, for the first time in years, or maybe it was a couple of days. Time began to run together and blur after a while. The good news is eventually I was able to escape. I have to say there is something very odd about actors showing up in limos, wearing designer clothes and hundreds of thousands of dollars in loaned bling, running a gamut of interviewers for various media outlets, and acting like they are just folks. Of course, it's an act, but then they are actors. That's what the Oscars are, a performance, and not a very good one. No one stops the film editors or the makers of that short documentary for a red carpet interview. I'm not even sure they are allowed on the carpet.
At the same time I noticed that there were no awards for the billionaire producers and CEOs of the media companies behind all these films. I always find the dog that didn't bark to be the most interesting. Their near absence is explainable because the Oscars are really all about the money. Having producers play a larger role would distract from the fantasy which itself distracts from this fact. Of course, there were billionaires there. There was Donald Trump, for instance, showing once again how dangerous it is to get between him and a camera. And then there was the patronizing Oprah Winfrey repeating the Depression-era spiel about how films permit us unwashed masses "escape" in these hard times. How many years has it been since Winfrey was so hard up she needed such escape I wondered.
But again it is all an act. It had been years since I last saw an Academy Awards show. Nothing really had changed. The script was virtually the same. The acceptance speeches were all the same whether it was for best acting or the sound editor. There were a few timely political comments that penetrated the overwhelming vapidity. I guess this is supposed to give a patina of relevance to the proceedings. There is the occasional award to the Hollywood bad boy or girl, and a nod or two to journeyman actors and technicians. But for the most part it is the spectacle of a millionaire actor with ego to match accepting an award and acting humble doing so while millionaire actors who've lost try to act graceful about it but don't quite pull it off and millionaire actor presenters and hosts act like they actually care that they are even there.
To call it all pretentious is to state the obvious. Still I couldn't help noticing the big films of the night were about a king and a billionaire with the arty side represented by a psychopathic ballerina, roles we can all relate to I'm sure. So much for social relevance. Anyway it has been years, as I said, since I have seen even part of one of these programs or been to a film in a theater. I couldn't resist writing about it, but I'm thinking I haven't missed much.
- Hugh's blog
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One good thing about this year's show
vs Previous years shows(and since its been awhile since you've watched, it probably wasn't that bad then) is that the hosts went for a more low key funny show, instead of the stupid "edgy" comedy that pokes fun at marginalized people, like Gervais' show.
Gervais finally went one step too far, I think, which is why the Oscar organizers decided to step back. But this increasing willingness on the behalf of the hosters to "kick down, kiss up" instead of vice versa, has turned me off.
So it was nice to see them bring some "class" back to it, I guess.
This isn't to disagree with any of the points you make(though, if it is really, all about the money, why did The Hurt Locker win over Avatar?
I think it's more about the personalities, and the conflicts, amongst this insular group of people, who are heavily influenced by money.
Kinda like DC, huh?
Corrente's own
Corrente's own Lost Clown sports far better sunglasses to a rally than these zillionaires wear to the red carpet extravaganza... and she knits a much finer sweater ta boot.
That said, I just couldn't watch a minute of it this year... I did go to the web site a couple weeks back just to put the interesting flick names in my netflix queue.
The biggest prize is awarded to the producers:
Best Picture
Good point about best picture
Good point about best picture being the producer's award. Aeryl, you're right I don't follow these things closely. Mostly I think there are just enough exceptions to give organizers a defense against farce.
My take on my Biz
If I had the time, I wanted to write a post on the Oscars from someone who works in "Hollywood". I'll just say right now that even though I'm in the Biz, I too have found the Oscars increasingly difficult to watch. I was talking to a colleague this morning about the Oscars in the days when we were rising in the business.
Where are the protest speeches? Where are the streakers and Sasheen Littlefeather speaking on behalf of Native Americans while accepting Marlon Brando's Oscar? Where are the totally "inappropriate" outfits? In essence, where is the anarchy, the renegade spirit that cropped up in the late Sixties and through the Eighties?
For one thing, in the 1980s and into the 1990s movie stars had to buy their own dresses and wear their own jewelry. The Red Carpet was maybe a half hour long. Now it is two hours. It was not about fashion. And Yes, I found all that lavishness in times of economic crisis to be gross.
Most disturbing for me has been the more warmongering tone of the last couple years. I found it appalling that the violent American centric "The Hurt Locker" beat out the pro environment anti-corporate "Avatar". Great, a woman director won. Not so great, she did so by blowing things up just as good as the guys. And last year some host said "God bless our troops" or something about that. But nobody said "God bless our teachers" this year.
I was rooting for the American movies that dealt with our dark side like "Social Network", "Inception", "The Fighter", and "Winter's Bone". Those movies showed us America now. And none of it is pretty, inspiring, or triumphant like the British Masterpiece Theatre stylish but safe "The King's Speech". And none of them were about rousing the citizens to bravely set out to war. Nor were they about some psychotic prima donna and her self inflicted problems as she climbs the staircase to fame and fortune.
Thank goodness, "Inside Job" won for best documentary and Ferguson could point out that nobody who caused the financial crisis was in jail. He didn't get the time that Michael Moore got though.
The main reason I watch them is that It gives me an excuse to drink Champagne cocktails.
Thanks for your perspective.
Thanks for your perspective. I was struck by how vacuous the whole process was. Nothing rose above the level of "I'm wearing fill in the blank." No one cared about the content of the films. One costume designer for Alice in Wonderland read a short speech about the story. As soon as she said, "In 1878..." you could almost hear the groans from the audience but it was really the only attempt at content during the whole evening. It seems though like the vacuity of the Oscars reflects a prevailing vacuity in the industry, and not just a vacuity but a kind of corporate status quo-ism. It helps explain for me why Hollywood is on the one hand supposed to be liberal but on the other has not been, and won't be, a significant source of support for a new progressive movement.
David Sanger, Versailles courtier-NYTimes, corrected Ferguson,
saying Bernie Madoff was in jail. For once, Brian Lehrer corrected his NYTimes sage by gently twitting him, noting that Bernie's financial crime was a clear cut old-fashioned Ponzi scheme while the crimes covered in "Inside Job" were far more complicated, ground breaking, and esoteric. Sanger back off a bit, sort of agreed... (This was on WNYC this morning.)
And, yes, no one could imagine saying "God bless out teachers"? Thank you for that observation.
The show must go on
Change a few words, and this could have been a post about Meet The Press. Or C-SPAN, for that matter.
When you have bland hosts,
you will have bland acceptance speeches. I'm not sure whose idea it was to get Franco and Hathaway, but neither of them have the background to handle the job.
There are a lot of good union jobs involved in putting the broadcast together and it supports an industry that is still heavily unionized but tottering in its ability (thanks to Prop 13 and Cali's inability to offer equivalent tax incentives) to support the middle class community. In the 80s, over 300 films were shot in LA per year. By 2009, it had dropped 9 films shot in LA. That's a lot of jobs that are sent elsewhere. And of course, with the filmmaking community de-centralized all over the US and with most states unable to sustain year round filmmaking, that's a lot of fulltime jobs lost entirely.
Maybe it needs to be said - the corporate owners of motion picture companies are conservative. The creative crew tends to be liberal - from the very top on down.
I think the criticism of Gervais led to this blandness--Hathaway
played well opposite the guy she was paired with earlier (can't recall who -- TV star with Broadway musical chops, iirc). But, yes, overall the hosting was extremely bland. Well, partly led to the overdose of plain vanilla.
I did hear there was more edge and spark during the commercial breaks, things the public was not shown.
water cooler stuff ...much ado about America's celeb aristocracy
Nice analysis, Hugh. "Impression management" ... seems to fuel Oscar night beginning on the red carpet. I missed it but apparently didn't miss much. I liked the King's Speech and have been a long time fan of Colin Firth. Mr. Darcy, his first, won my girlish heart.
Schadenfreude follow-up with Joannie Rivers with the gowns bitchiness.
Glad to hear about Mr. Ferguson making his statement. Wish more actors were more active politically. Was happy to see propagandized Waiting for Superman wasn't even nominated. Thank God. Movies and propaganda.
And isn't there a lot of pr corruption pushing for the winners? How much integrity can survive from a Hollywood system?
Post-Oscars' presser statement from Inception cinemaographer
winner, Wally Pfister...when he had time to say a bit more.
Did it get news coverage? Ha! But there is this tidbit.