Cringeworthy jokes aren’t the only issue with awards
Ten minutes into Sunday night’s Baftas, I began to think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was right to bin the idea of an Oscar host entirely. I like Joanna Lumley – we all do – but that script! You wouldn’t think it possible to write something anodyne and stilted that still somehow managed to include a joke about the Ku Klux Klan, and yet somebody managed it. And let’s hope that somebody spent the whole of yesterday shuddering with shame.
Not that a day’s penance will solve the award ceremony problem. Because you can sack the scriptwriters along with the hosts, but at a time when an off-colour joke made in primary school can lose you a job, a time when asking about the pretty dress a woman’s wearing is deemed offensive and it’s more important than ever to be down with the people, isn’t the basic premise of award ceremonies a problem? Aren’t they quite simply outmoded?