Oscar Wrap-up

The Oscars always suck to some degree, but last night went beyond suck into some strange Outer Limits of confusion.  Not that I sat through the whole thing – that just wouldn’t be feasible.  But I saw enough to know that something was really, really off and my question is, was it by accident or design?  I should say that this could be just plain ignorance, since I’ve been checked out of mainstream network television culture since the beginning of the millennium.  So perhaps all heavily hyped tv spectaculars are like this nowadays.  But no, wait, I saw Ricky Gervais for a few minutes on the Globes and that was refreshing and nerve-wracking in all the right ways.  It can be done.  Now, I’m enough of a good patriotic citizen to not wish for a devastating Gervaisian takedown at the Oscars, but there are a couple of things I’ve come to expect for my tax dollars*, and coherence is one of them.  What the flying fuck was going on last night?  What was that thing where they’d introduce a great movie of the past, like Gone with the Wind, and some flames would appear and then a presenter would walk out and give an award that had absolutely nothing to do with Gone with the Wind?  Or why did James Franco walk out dressed as Marilyn Monroe after Anne Hathaway gamely performed an amusing song about, wait for it, Hugh Jackman?  Where was the joke?  This happened again and again in schizophrenic fashion.  Jokes, I assume they were jokes but I can’t be sure, would fall flat, transitions were disjointed and the winners, oh god, the winners.  First of all, I suspected immediately upon hearing Melissa Leo interviewed on Fresh Air that I plum didn’t like her.  Last night just clinched it.  We know you’re actors and you’re supposed to be full of shit, but the least we can expect is some basic competency in phoniness.  It was like Norma Desmond accepting her long overdue Oscar but “acting” shocked for the benefit of her devoted minions.  And why is it such a difficult concept to thank the Academy for the award in under 20 seconds?  Year after year, winner after winner, they just can’t seem to get it in under the wire.  Just too hard to shut the fuck up I suppose.  Christ, I was never so relieved to see the friggin’ obituary sequence which had the advantage of at least making sense. 

The whole thing was a major bummer because I think a lot of us were glad to see a genuine maverick like Franco get a chance to strut his stuff on an international stage, and couldn’t really complain about the choice of Hathaway, who actually has a sense of humor, good looks, and a healthy dose of enthusiasm.  They are going to take the blame for this fiasco but I suspect that it was some gaggle of moronic executives who should be hanged in the public square.  But what do you expect when the whole operation is, to borrow from one of the winners, an inside job paid for with the ill begotten gains of bloodsucking speculators?  My communist fiancé made me write that last part, but hey, when you’re right, you’re right.

 * Those dollars bailed out JP Morgan who seems to be doing well enough now to sponsor the Academy Awards.  At least someone made it through this recession in one piece, which is more than I can say for the public employees in Wisconsin.  I did hear at least one of the unionized workforce out in Hollywood mention the word “union” and express support, but nobody sent any Native Americans up to refuse their trophies and basically, while workers camped out for the third day in the state assembly in Madison, the whole affair went unmentioned, because, after all, JP Morgan was sponsoring the event and that just wouldn’t do.  Where would we be without decorum?