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Thursday, February 22, 2018
Oscar Telecast Seeks to Polish Hollywood’s Tarnished Image
Variety: When the Academy Awards were first handed out 89 years ago, Variety reported at the time that the planning for the dinner and ceremony at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood took about a week of organizing to pull together and the awards ceremony took all of 15 minutes.
Whether it be Joe Biden introducing Lady Gaga's powerful song "Till it Happens to You" or a powerful speech from Patricia Arquette, every year the Oscars makes it a priority to address the issues that affect Hollywood during that time. This year, the Academy has even more of a challenge and responsibility to address this issue head on. The biggest challenge they have right now, it probably the most inevitable one, looking hypocritical. There's no denying that actors like Kevin Spacey, Woody Allen, and Casey Affleck have both won an Academy award and have also been accused of harassment and misconduct. The way they handle this will make history, they might have the host make a joke, or they'll deliver a powerful speech regarding the topic, but if they don't think about these awards with the utmost delicacy, this years Oscars will go down in infamy. It might not make a difference for Hollywood at this very moment, but this might just go a long way.
The article brings up the point that it needs to strike a balance between addressing the issues at hand while not hitting the audience over the head with them. However, if the industry is really committed to addressing these issues why does it matter that every acceptance speech and prologue and closing speech talk about these issues. Clearly, if these are the only issues being talked about then there is a huge importance to them. Yes, I understand t.v. ratings but this question of art versus message is an issue not just faced by the Oscar award show. The commercial theatre is also plagued with this question. Does it do the show that they know will sell out the audience every night but will also be offensive to many minority groups or do producers choose a show that sends a strong message out to the audience and entertainment community? One thing that I found interesting about the article is how it didn’t value DVD sales and just looked at how successful a show was at turning a profit based on movie theatre sales. Now when online streaming and DVD sales are so much greater than in the “golden age of film”, I think there needs to be some consideration to this in measuring the success of a show.
2 comments:
Whether it be Joe Biden introducing Lady Gaga's powerful song "Till it Happens to You" or a powerful speech from Patricia Arquette, every year the Oscars makes it a priority to address the issues that affect Hollywood during that time. This year, the Academy has even more of a challenge and responsibility to address this issue head on. The biggest challenge they have right now, it probably the most inevitable one, looking hypocritical. There's no denying that actors like Kevin Spacey, Woody Allen, and Casey Affleck have both won an Academy award and have also been accused of harassment and misconduct. The way they handle this will make history, they might have the host make a joke, or they'll deliver a powerful speech regarding the topic, but if they don't think about these awards with the utmost delicacy, this years Oscars will go down in infamy. It might not make a difference for Hollywood at this very moment, but this might just go a long way.
The article brings up the point that it needs to strike a balance between addressing the issues at hand while not hitting the audience over the head with them. However, if the industry is really committed to addressing these issues why does it matter that every acceptance speech and prologue and closing speech talk about these issues. Clearly, if these are the only issues being talked about then there is a huge importance to them. Yes, I understand t.v. ratings but this question of art versus message is an issue not just faced by the Oscar award show. The commercial theatre is also plagued with this question. Does it do the show that they know will sell out the audience every night but will also be offensive to many minority groups or do producers choose a show that sends a strong message out to the audience and entertainment community? One thing that I found interesting about the article is how it didn’t value DVD sales and just looked at how successful a show was at turning a profit based on movie theatre sales. Now when online streaming and DVD sales are so much greater than in the “golden age of film”, I think there needs to be some consideration to this in measuring the success of a show.
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