After last year’s record-low viewing numbers, the 81st Academy Awards was sure to be different. Sid Ganis, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences promised it. And different it was. Hugh Jackman in a top hat singing badly with a band behind him – different.
When I heard Wolverine was going to be hosting the Academy Awards the first thing that went through my mind was: Awesome. When I saw Jackman dancing with Beyonce Knowles to a badly mixed hodge-podge of old musical soundtracks, a little piece of me died.
Apparently Ganis felt the best way to get people interested in the Oscars again was to make them more entertaining. The whole ceremony seems to have been converted into something straight from prime-time television. Well known stars over-dressed, over painted, on a lit stage dancing to live music. What was once a description of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars is now used with ease to describe the most important night in Hollywood.
A historical ceremony with a respected reputation for rewarding artists with praise and acknowledgment has become nothing more than a televised event meant to glue-in eyes en masse.
And it worked. Though the ratings did not fly through the roof, the reinvigorated, Botox injected ceremony on crack received a slight boost in numbers.
Good job Ganis. You have openly acknowledged that the entertainment industry has no shame when it comes to selling to an audience. Instead of maintaining the reputation of your award show by hanging on to a little dignity, you designed a new ceremony that might likely survive a long run on Broadway.
Gone are the days when a night at the Academy Awards meant a critical look at the past year in cinema, an honorable tribute to the artists who have paved the foundation. Gone are the days that we celebrate movies not because they entertained us, but because they expanded the scope of filmmaking itself.
In are the days of the all-singing, all-dancing Jacksonites, the High School Musical, Jonas Brothers 3-D, Mylie Cyrus, crop of the world. In are the cheese-ball dance sequences, just for the fun of a cheese-ball dance sequence. In is: glitter, glam, and anything that young people will keep watching.
-In today’s Academy Awards, pointed directly at a young audience in a style that begs for attention, not respect, it is likely that well deserving films will continue to lose out to every movie that uses destiny as its main theme and was directed by Danny Boyle.
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