National Post (National Edition)
HISTORIC IMPERFECTION ACADEMY AWARDS
Was there ever a time when the Oscars were good? Justine Smith
It is a small mercy that the 91st Academy Awards will have no host. As the Oscars imploded in the lead up to this year’s broadcast – flip-flopping on a new category, awards being handed out during commercial breaks and, yes, hosts – the event’s relevancy has become more questionable than ever. Throw in a list of uninspiring nominees, some pointless performances (Queen without Freddie? No thanks.) and a general lack of awareness, and one thing becomes painfully obvious: the Oscars just aren’t cool.
But perhaps the only thing less cool than the Academy Awards is pointing out how uncool they are. It’s like beating a dead War Horse. The truth is the Oscars have always been terrible.
With dashes of glitz and g l a m o u r, the Academy Awards are supposed to represent the best of Hollywood. In practice, however, this is rarely the case. As the great American director Howard Hawks once put it, “I’ve seen too many pictures that I thought were not good pictures nominated and win.” Typically, an Oscar represents little more great marketing. It’s great for making millions more at the box office and being used as leverage in contract negotiations.
It’s hard to say at exactly at what point we took the Oscars seriously. The founding of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hosts the annual Academy Awards, was primarily created to quash unions and lend respectability to an industry perceived by many to be a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. The first 10 years of the Academy Awards, from 1927 to 1937, were plagued with scandals. There were boycotts and bribery. The ceremony, not yet open to the public, was infamously dull. If people gripe nowadays that the best films of the year are rarely nominated, it was the same back then.
Is the power of Hollywood myth-making so tremendous that we are able to believe the Oscars were ever beloved or respected?
According to Ephraim Katz’s The Film Encyclopedia, by the 1960s, “the aura of the Oscar has become increasingly tainted.” Outlining common complaints, many of which that are still relevant today, Katz points to a flawed voting system and accusations that the show is little more than a popularity contest. There does not seem to be any point in Oscar’s history when this wasn’t the case.
In 1969, The New York Times ran a story called “Who (and What) Makes the Oscars ‘Possible’?” It was about the importance of the press agent in finding Oscar success. It outlines the various ways a good agent will help a film get nominated. There are three main strategies: free exposure, advertising and private screenings. The race to the Oscars has always been about who can put on the most convincing campaign. In an interview with an executive, Mia Farrow’s performance in Rosemary’s Baby came up. She was not nominated, and the interviewee speculated that it was because “she is young, and abrasive, and very independent.” Being unlikeable, by the standards of a conservative Academy, was enough to see Farrow overlooked in favour of safer choices. Two years later, George C. Scott would become the first person to turn down his Oscar for his performance in Patton. His response to the Academy Awards was that they were little more than “a beauty contest and a meat market.”
If the first 50 years of the Academy Awards were a mess, they certainly haven’t improved since. When something exciting happens or a worthy film is awarded, it is the exception and not the rule. Over the past two decades, Oscar campaigns have only gotten more extensive and expensive. With Miramax, the since-disgraced Harvey Wein- stein changed the Oscar game by investing millions into Academy Awards campaigns for movies like The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, The Reader and My Week with Marilyn. Weinstein, who faces five charges including rape and two counts of predatory sexual assault, almost singlehandedly ushered in a new era of buying awards by exploiting Academy loopholes. His methods set a new spending standard, further diminishing the dubious value of the award.
And how about the ceremony? If the Oscars have value, it is as a celebration of celebrity. If there was any doubt, the recently reversed decision to relegate the editing and cinematography awards to commercial breaks proves the show is not about artistry, it’s about fame and glamour. Yet, the faux importance of the awards leans into bad jokes and stuffy seriousness that feels increasingly out of touch in the more intimate landscape of the internet and social media. In the past, stocking the show with stars was an effective way to boost ratings, but in an era where anyone can watch Cardi B eat lobster on Instagram, it is completely ineffective.
While the 2019 Oscars seems to be heading for a new low, it’s important to remember that the Academy Awards was never a bastion of quality or entertainment. The show, from the very earliest moments of its history, has represented its industry’s worst impulses.
Is there a solution on the horizon? Well, not really. To engineer an Oscars ceremony that is both entertaining and relevant would mean a complete overhaul. The necessary changes would only dishonour the ceremony’s long history of irrelevancy. Wishing for a time when the Academy Awards was good is wishing for a time that either never existed, or occurred only when we were too ignorant to know better.