The Oscars
I don’t plan to watch. Which is astounding if I look back to the past. The Oscars were a ritual. My mother would stay up late watching them. She was a movie buff, she used to go to these Judith Crist weekends. This was back when being a fan was enough, you didn’t need a badge, you didn’t go online and try and become a star yourself. The world has changed a lot, but the Oscar telecast has not. Hell, the movies themselves have changed but the Oscars have not.
Everything comes and goes, like MTV. Youngsters would find it hard to believe that when MTV launched we’d stare at it for hours, usually at a friend’s house, because it wasn’t yet available in ours. It was new, it was different, it demanded all of our attention, it drove the culture, and then it didn’t. Kind of like the VMAs. That was an awards show, with an irreverence lacking from the Oscars. And although the VMAs still exist, they’re completely irrelevant, a marketing vehicle. That’s what the Grammys turned into too. A way to expose talent. Once it was learned there was a bounce from an appearance, everybody wanted to be on, performing their new song so it could run up the chart. But the audience was turned off by this, and there’s no longer a bounce. Turns out in the streaming era everybody who is interested has already experienced the music. It’s only the out-of-touch brain dead who learn something from an awards telecast. Not to mention, in today’s world of deep niches, nothing is universal and most people don’t care about most things, think about that.
But it’s the same damn Oscar show every year.
I’m not saying the nominees don’t want to win, I realize people tune in for the fashions, but the movies themselves have changed, as have stars, the world is different, but in Oscarland, it’s completely the same.
Kind of like in music. None of the classic acts can get any traction with new material. The old fans don’t want it and the youngsters have more than enough with what’s out there already. Music moves forward, you have to accept this. You can also accept that music today is in a bad space, but that does not mean it will be so forever. But one thing is for sure, we’re going forward, not backward.
And speaking of going forward, the movies today are all about superhero/comic book/action adventure tentpoles. That’s okay, it just doesn’t square with the Oscars, which are supposed to be about artistry as opposed to commerciality, and in films the two diverged decades ago. You cannot square what is popular with what is good, what is art, what the Oscars want to reward. The Oscars are still living in a twentieth century world, and it’s 2022.
Not that I think the Oscars should be fixed. They had their run, that’s it. They’ve been superseded by streaming TV. Streaming TV liberated creators, suddenly everything was fair game, and on a smaller screen it’s about plot as opposed to image. Movies have become special events, kind of like the circus, before that was put out of business, because it was out of date and out of time, what was permissible in the past is not necessarily permissible today. Going to the movies used to be a ritual, an interest akin to sports. You knew who the actors were, you were aware of the past greats, and the films addressed and moved the culture. But they haven’t done that for a very long time. Think about it, we had a slew of Vietnam movies, from “Apocalypse Now” to “The Deer Hunter” to “Coming Home” to… But we haven’t had a slew of films about the dot com crash, or the 2008 meltdown. No big budget studio efforts that try to make sense of the past. There was “The Big Short,” which was excellent, and did not use a traditional style, kudos, but it was just one movie.
And then there’s the indie sphere. Which is kind of like music. With the means of production so inexpensive, everybody is making a movie these days, and everybody believes their film is worthy of attention. It’s positively overwhelming to the consumer. Furthermore, the films play at festivals for eons before they’re released generally. They’re already passé, moribund. As for the audience? There is one, but they want to see them at home, on the flat screen, built in to a service they’re already paying for. The independent business is so rearguard, it’s nearly a circle jerk. In today’s attention economy, the indies put up so many barriers to seeing their pics that they go unseen. I’m not paying fifteen bucks to see one pic when that will buy me a month of Netflix. As for going to the theatre, it’s too slow for me. The movies don’t start when I get there and I’ve got travel time and I can’t pause them and I know there are dedicated moviegoers yelling just the opposite right now, but they’re in the minority. What’s the metaphor, you skate to where the puck is going? Well, it certainly isn’t going to a healthy independent theatre experience.
Change is hard. And it often happens when you’re not looking. But if you don’t change, you become moribund, stuck in the past, which may be comfortable, but leaves you in the rearview mirror.
Let’s talk about the excising of all those awards from the telecast.
The question is simple. Are the Oscars an awards ceremony or a TV show? Awards ceremonies are supposed to have gravitas, have meaning, which is why everybody’s pissed off that these awards will not get airtime. But they do detract from the flow of the show, so should they go? Well, as soon as you get rid of them you undercut the essence of the Oscars. But like everything these days, it all comes down to the money, and that TV cash…
And when the money is first, the public knows it and bakes it into their decisions. I mean the Oscars are undercutting whatever credibility they still have. As for the Grammys adding nominees after the fact, these people are so inside they can’t see the outside whatsoever. The public is laughing, you just showed the truth, that the awards are worthless.
And most awards are. The funny thing is what is awarded most, which gains the general consensus, is not what is remembered, even lauded in the future. And there are so many awards shows, aimed at people who got a trophy just for participating, that winning means nearly nothing.
That’s the world we live in.
Want to have an awards show where you honor popcorn pics? Be my guest. But trying to mix them with artistic films is like bringing Megan Thee Stallion to the symphony, it’s a different thing.
Now the truth is I don’t have enough time. That’s what the internet era has wrought, a tsunami of information, a lot of which I’m interested in. Do I want to waste four plus hours seeing some awards show? No. I’ll just read who won and move on, like everybody else, no one seems to remember who won.
I mean first we’ve got the news. It’s endless, and right now there’s Ukraine and Web3 and the film business has its head stuck in the sand like none of this exists. And who cares what actors have to say about the big issues anyway, they’re just playing a role. And there’s an entire gossip industry built on such issues as whether Jennifer Aniston wants a baby, will have a baby, or will get back together with Brad Pitt. That’s commerce, not news. Like most of the tentpole pictures. It’s fine if people want to pay attention, but not me. I mean once “The Towering Inferno” was part of the culture, but today we’ve got so many options we have superior stuff to consume, and interestingly we all want to consume different stuff.
I guess that’s another problem with the Oscars. There’s no longer a monoculture, that went out with the last century, where the Oscars are still living. We’re all in a different space and we all think our opinion is worthwhile and maybe awards shows are history, just like late night TV.
Did you see that Jimmy Fallon just got a new producer? That used to be big news, they wrote books about late night TV. But now fewer people than ever watch the shows and they don’t move the needle. I mean the goals of the past mean nothing today. Remember when every comedian wanted a sitcom? Today there are few sitcoms and the ones that air play to tiny audiences and you’re not furthering your career whatsoever. Things change.
I wish I was excited about the Oscars.
Then again, there was that news about a month ago, how all these foreign language series are being watched in not only America, but around the world. That’s exciting. Around the world creators are striving for our attention, doing new things, testing limits, and there’s an audience for all this, whereas another Marvel movie? I mean it’s juvenile, whereas most of these foreign streaming series are not.
So I don’t know where the world is going, but one thing I know for sure, it is going. And if you want to drag it into the past, if you want to protest about change, the joke is on you.
If you have a profile, people are pissed when you change. But artists can’t be beholden to their audience, no way, otherwise they’re not artists.
I already know what the Oscar telecast will contain before I turn it on. Oh, a few jokes, a few faux pas, boring musical numbers and some winners, that’s it. Interested? I mean I can literally name a hundred things I’d rather do with my time.
Or you could go smaller, take the route of gravitas, meaning, but the Oscars still think there’s such a thing as one national mind when a healthy chunk of the population truly believes Trump should be president, that victory was stolen from him. Maybe you forgo the big tent, the big net, and only appeal to the fans.
But that would require living in the future.
The Oscars are all about the past. Own it, don’t try to convince us otherwise, because we’re not buying it.
But we’re buying plenty of stuff, if you want to push the envelope and get us excited.
But the Oscar telecast does not.
Next.
