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Overrated: The Oscars
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With the Hollywood writers strike showing no signs of being resolved any time soon, the film industry is on tenterhooks over whether this year's Academy Awards ceremony will take place as normal or will have to be replaced by some apologetic alternative. Will Tinseltown's most glamorous occasion have to follow the lead of the Golden Globes and hold a glitz-free press conference? Or will they do down the People's Choice route and present their gongs in a TV studio to stars only present in VT form? Here at MSN Movies we've got the perfect solution to the Academy's quandary. Don't hold the Oscars at all. Ever again.
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After all, who would suffer? Not the celebrities, forced every year to prostitute themselves on the red carpet to a baying mob of paparazzi, reporters and rubberneckers. Not the viewer, who'll be spared the annual orgy of back-slapping, false sentiment and rambling, tearful speeches. The media, too, will be free to concentrate on other weighty matters, like Britney's latest breakdown or Amy's new crack video. Okay, so the Academy would take a hit, its utter irrelevance exposed for all to see once its raison d'etre was removed, while there'd be a few million mournful bookmakers. And yes, the studios would have to find something else to promote their movies and DVDs with in place of the spurious respectability an Oscar triumph provides. Chances are, though, that not holding the Oscars would just show the world how little it really needs them. And isn't that exactly what the Academy is afraid of?
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It's entirely an accident that the Oscars have come to be regarded as the ultimate cinema accolade. Back in the 1920s when they were first conceived, they were intended to be a mere promotional tool: a way for the newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to justify its largely derided existence. ("There's something embarrassing about all these wealthy people publicly congratulating each other," said Cary Grant sniffily.) They weren't even annual to begin with, taking place on an ad hoc basis whenever the body could be bothered to hold them. And the elaborate pantomime involving the golden envelope? Didn't happen. In the early days recipients knew months in advance they'd won, the Academy only opting to keep their identities a secret from 1941 onwards.
Indeed, it was only after the Oscars were televised in 1953 that they became the huge event they are today: "two hours of glittering entertainment," as frequent host Johnny Carson would say, "spread out over four hours." These days the ceremony is not so much a broadcast as a runaway steamroller, defying all attempts to slim it down, smarten it up or rid it of its inherent, ingratiating smugness. Only two things are guaranteed on Oscar night: that the wrong people will win, and that they'll make a right old meal of it when they do. If it takes a damaging and acrimonious industrial action to shut them up, surely that's a price worth paying?
Neil's views and opinions are expressed as his own and MSN neither endorses or necessarily agrees with the statements made in Neil's columns. MSN disclaims any and all liability for the views expressed in Neil's columns.
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