Oscar Apathy, Part 2

Well, I survived Oscar weekend, which was filled with baking for a party I co-hosted with friends.  The show itself is pretty much a blur, but I consider it to be an above average undertaking, though I think Neil Patrick Harris got swallowed by awesome stage design.  There were some very high notes, and I missed most of the jokes that died.  The big headlines however are that the ratings were at a six year low.  Why is that?

After quite a few years of hiatus, I re-entered and won the Oscar pool.  This is mostly due to the fact that I am still an avid reader of awards websites, not because I have seen all the movies.  My friends who tried to compete with me came at the Oscar ballot at an extreme disadvantage, because while American Sniper is an outright blockbuster, the rest of the nominees from Best Picture on down (save Animated Feature and the industry awards) are all middle of the road money makers, even though The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson's top grossing movie. Wes Anderson is no Steven Spielberg.

I really do not believe that the glut of awards shows is the problem, either, because I do not believe most people even care outside of the Golden Globes, which is really just watched to see if some drunken celebrity will do something stupid.  Unfortunately, I think the Academy is more likely to assume "awards fatigue" is the problem instead of truly looking inward at themselves.  Here are some of the issues I see:

- Art vs. Entertainment

I cannot begrudge the Academy for wanting to honor those movies that strive to be art, but unfortunately, it is rare that those movies end up being popular with the general population.  Sure, there are quite a few Best Picture winners that have scored over $100 million (it would be interesting to see how much nominations and wins effected that earning), but there are only three since 1990 who have achieved more than $200 million - 2003 LOTR: The Return of the King, 1994 Forrest Gump, and of course, 1997 Titanic.  Of course, the great argument is whether these blockbusters were actually the "Best" movies of the year, but it is a pretty subjective question anyway.  However, if you're going to look at just ratings of the telecasts, the highest ratings of all time was the year Titanic won, and the highest ratings since 2000 was the year of The Return of the King.  So you see, the ratings have nothing to do with who is hosting or who is singing what, it has everything to do with the general populace buying into the horse race with enough passion to want to tune in to see if their favorite won.

Of course, I would never want to see a Best Picture race comprised of the top ten grossing films of the year, because, obviously, popularity does not connote quality, but if year in and year out we are going to bemoan the falling ratings of the telecast, then the Oscars really need to figure out a way to celebrate movies that reach the cultural zeitgeist as well as those that are the pinnacle of the craft.

Source: Box Office Mojo & WikiPedia

- The Show Itself

I have already established the connection between popular nominees and ratings.  It certainly was not Neil Patrick Harris' fault that this year's show tanked.  However, the show itself is a bloated mess and a joke in and of itself.  Everyone already knows that it will run long, but they keep adding in more and more in the hopes of keeping people engaged.  I really think the whole things needs to be scrapped and start from scratch, with nothing sacred even the current category structure.  Of course, this will never happen because of the structure of the Academy itself, and it would be a slippery slope to say that you'll just include Writing, Supporting Actor/Actress, Actor/Actress, Director, and Picture. Best Original Song at least brings something to the proceedings, though the rules are so arcane it makes for odd choices.  However, despite the artistry, no one really cares about Documentaries, Shorts, Foreign Language Film, and the majority of the tech categories (except maybe for special effects).

With that being said, their could be MORE categories, too.  Each of the shows that have popped up seem to have at least one innovative category.  The Golden Globes split Drama & Comedy (usually not well), the Screen Actor's Guild honors Best Ensemble, etc.  There should be something for stunt people, too.

- Eliminate the Host

I decided to break this one out on it's own from the one above.  No offense to everyone who has come before, but being the Oscar host has to be the single most thankless job in entertainment.  Jesus Christ herself could get up there, and someone would still complain.  The reality of the matter is that outside of the opening, there really is no need for one.  It's better to just get out of the way and start the show.

I am sure I could armchair quarterback this some more, and I know I do not fully comprehend the pressure the producers are under to make the show the same every year.  However, something needs to change, and I have not even gone into the nuts and bolts of this whitest Oscars in many years.  I just hope they have a real conversation about it.  Things need to change.

Oscar Apathy

When I first started messing around with websites back in the 1994 (ughhhh), my first Geocities site was a movie related page called Binky's Movie Hut.  My nickname in college, was inexplicably, Binky, and it all just rolled together with my love of movies.  I had a pretty full list of movie reviews and the like, which I wish I had backed up somewhere.  I mean, I wasn't going to threaten Roger Ebert, but I was pretty happy with my writing at that time.  

As the '90s progressed and my skills became better, I morphed my site into Awards Avenue, and it became much more focused on the awards show circuit.  I covered music, television, theater, and of course, the Road to the Oscars, which became quite a very busy time between November-March.  I was really in on the ground floor of what became a cottage industry of prognosticators orbiting around movie awards.  Theater also got me a lot of hits, because there really were not a lot of people covering it, but the big focus was the Oscars.  I got a lot of hits for a fan site, and if I had not given it up because it was beginning to interfere with my real job, I really think something good might have come out of it.  My crowning achievement was my super inclusive calendar of Oscar precursors (critic and guild awards) being quotes by leading Oscar site OscarWatch, which is now AwardsDaily.com due to the Academy being stingy with their copywrites.  Years later, I am friends on Facebook with Awards Daily diva, Sasha Stone, and I think I comment enough on her stuff that she knows who I am.  It is the little things, but I digress.

During this time, I also held my annual Oscar Party, which started out as something at my apartment and grew bigger into my friend, Melissa's, house.  It then outgrew itself into a fundraiser for a local organization called Indiana Still Cares, which was my first tip toe into the Indianapolis gay community.  I got on the radar of Gary Brackett, who was also President of Indy Pride at that point, and I think you can see where this is going.  I owe a lot to my love of the Oscars, which is why my apathy for the show is a little disconcerting.

The Oscars have not changed with the times, and even though they seem to add more and more diversity every year, the decisions made for winners still seems to be stuck in the fuddy duddy white voters.  The fact that there is not one person of color nominated in any of the major categories or a woman director is just abysmal, and that is not to say that every nominee is not deserving.  It is just unfortunate that the wealth cannot be spread.

There is a lot more wrong with the system than I care to get into here, but the fact that I have only seen two of the nominated Best Pictures is pretty indicative that the Oscars are not in line with my tastes.  I am really hoping that piece of jingoist propaganda, American Sniper, does not win Best Picture on Sunday, because that might just be the final nail for me.