Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
This is a nation that can’t find someone to host the Academy Awards.
Is this relevant?
Is it just the opinion of someone watching a broadcast few pay attention to anymore?
Jimmy Kimmel just hosted the 89th Academy Awards, the annual ceremony in which Oscar statues are given for achievements in filmmaking.
The year was marked by a wild twist of a bungled Best Picture award, though not all that many people were watching when it happened.
The Oscars, feeling the downturn in ratings over the past 15 years, have reacted in various ways, namely increasing Best Picture nominees from five to up-to-10, adding a Best Animated Feature award – a prize with less than 15 eligible contestants per year – to a rotating attempt at finding a host.
A common element of all these hosts is the tone of the show they deliver.
From Ellen DeGeneres to Kimmel to Whoopi Goldberg and Seth MacFarlane, their humor simply takes the tack to cut away at any glamour or grandeur: self-involved jokes, mean-spirited comments, unfunny bits with the audience.
Kimmel referred to the broadcast several times as an “awards show.”
While it is undisputed we are in the era of too many awards shows, saying the Oscars is an “awards show” is like calling the Super Bowl a “sports championship.”
Movies, in good years and bad, are the highest expression of a (contemporary) culture. One of the first things people learn about a country or a people is its art. Movies are modern times' most powerful form.
So it should be permitted to take that semi-seriously for one night. It's even fitting.
The Academy Awards, however, don’t believe this anymore.
Once upon a time, our country could, and did, find people to host an occasion such as this, for years on end: Billy Crystal, Johnny Carson and before that, Bob Hope.
While Chris Rock, John Stewart and Neil Patrick Harris take the Oscar stage with off-color jokes to make the audience uncomfortable, Carson walked out and said, “Welcome to the Academy Awards, where we’ve packed two and a half hours of entertainment into a four-hour show.”
Who laughed? Cynics, check. Idealists, check. Glamorous people, check. Arthouse fans, check. Action-movie fans, check.
In other words, the nation.
We had someone to host the evening who could needle it, while at the same time carry its tone of class. The Academy Awards are supposed to have some prestige, they can't help it. But now, instead of trying to be the very best version of what it actually is, the Oscars try hard to casualize itself every year, while the ratings drop another notch.
Crystal, who will likely go down as the most memorable host for his work in the early '90s, never ordered pizza, ran a juvenile feud with Matt Damon or dropped popcorn from the ceiling.
He worked his humor into the existing tone of the show, instead of trying to change that tone.
One night of elegance and elan – it's why prom endures as an attraction to every generation.
Has cynicism advanced so far in this country that we can’t temper it for one night for the Academy Awards?
It makes you wonder, and the search is on for the next host.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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