Academy Awards - Entertainment Commentary

I admit it. I dutifully tune in to the Academy Awards every March – nominee list in hand. This year I watched the entire pre-show just to see Angelina Jolie arrive at the red carpet, I shouted – loudly – at the television that Jude Law should win for Best Supporting Actor, and when Hilary Swank accepted the Best Actress award for her role in Boy’s Don’t Cry and forgot to thank her husband, well, it made the four plus hours worth it.  Yes, I’m an Academy Awards junkie.

But these days, I can feed my fix for gossip and high drama among the stars almost every week of the year. Before the Oscars, there are the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the MTV Movie Awards, and the Blockbuster Awards. Plus, the Emmys, the Tonys, the Grammys, the ESPYs, the Webbies, the Cleos, the Raspberries. At last count, I tallied over 30 different awards shows celebrating everything from Best Cartoon to Best On-Screen Kiss.  Daily Variety reported that there were 3,182 awards given out in 332 different ceremonies last year. These shows have transformed from small, in-house celebrations of the year’s best work, to multi-million dollar media escapades that often have little to do with actual talent. Recently, Hollywood’s darling for the moment takes the prize over those with any true acting ability.  Remember when Gwyneth Paltrow in her Barbie Doll pink gown stole the Best Actress award from Cate Blanchett at the Academy Awards last year just because she could feign a British accent and look cute in a doublet?  It was all I could do not to throw my celebratory popcorn at the television.

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In 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held the first Academy Awards ceremony. The goal was to to boost moral at a time when Hollywood was faced with the onset of the Great Depression and the awkward and dubious transition from silent films to “talkies.” The Academy’s mission statement boasted about “advanc[ing] the art… of motion pictures” and “provid[ing] a common forum… for various branches and crafts.”  They even said they were created to “foster educational activities between the professional community and the public at-large.”  This is a lofty statement for an organization that now consistently promotes Joan Rivers as the fashion consultant to the stars.

The original Academy Awards ceremony was a small, private gathering for the Hollywood elite. There were 250 attendents, tickets cost 10 dollars, and 15 awards were presented in a banquet ceremony that lasted under two hours – including dinner.  But it’s producers quickly found out that the public was interested in the results.  The Academy grew in size and stature and the awards ceremony soon became what some have called a “national holiday” for Hollywood.  It was first telecast in 1953 and has since grown to become one of the most watched shows on television. Today, 23 awards are given out (not including the Scientific and Technical Awards) in a ceremony that lasts over four hours. According to the Nielson ratings, nearly 80 million people tuned in to at least part of this year's show, and almost 50 million watched from beginning to end. Even the pre- and post-shows bring in viewers. And telecast websites like E! Online and Oscar.com were so flooded with net surfers they had to shut down temporarily.

Today, Oscar equals money. More people watching the Oscars means more people willing to dish out nine bucks for a night at the movies. And studio executives are capitalizing on the Oscar hype. Entertainment industry studies say that studios spend up to $15 million on publicity and marketing for movies that have a good chance of getting nominated. This may seem excessive, but an Oscar-winning movie can be worth $100 million at the box office if promoted widely enough. It can also mean greater exposure for smaller budget movies. Every major studio has a publicist in charge of Oscar promotion, and while major solicitation of Academy members has been discouraged, buzz is circulated with unfaltering momentum up until the night of the show.

Show night is the networks’ turn to draw in the masses. In the last decade, the amount of money brought in by awards shows for advertising and ratings has risen into the tens of millions. Researchers have been hired to determine who is watching these shows and how best to reach them. The Oscars even changed their airdate from Monday to Sunday last year to better reach working families. And advertisers are paying out record amounts of money to seize this ever-growing audience.  Companies like American Express and Charles Schwab plunked down over a million dollars for a thirty-second spot during the Academy Awards this year – a cost second only to the Super Bowl. With forty slots in the four-hour telecast, ABC brought in a reported $64 million.

Now every network – large and small – is trying to capitalize on the awards frenzy.  NBC recently claimed the Golden Globes; CBS got the People's Choice Awards and the Grammys.  MTV, VH1, ESPN and Nickelodeon are also trying to get a piece of the action.

Entertainment corporations, too, are cashing in on this multi-media phenomenon.  Some have even created their own academies – complete with publicity departments and yearly awards shows – to boost sales and raise moral. For example, in 1997, Spain’s top music industry moguls developed the Spanish Academy of Music following a sales slump the year prior.  Before they turned in their incorporation papers, members were voting to select nominees for 17 different awards categories.  This proliferation of top ten lists has gotten out of control, and the idea of what awards are really supposed to be about has been lost.

Awards shows have become a business, and even the actors are becoming a party to it. The Oscar is the goal, not the hard-earned reward. Consider Tom Cruise's role in Magnolia for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. His publicity team was so forceful in promoting his Oscar-quality performance, I was shocked when Michael Caine took the award for his more down-played role in The Cider House Rules. (Add this to the list of insider dramas that keeps us tuning in every year.)

Comparing the original mission statement of the Academy to what the Academy Awards stands for today is testament to what economics and a greedy consumer public has done to the entertainment world. Far from educational, the Academy Awards have become a showcase for glitz, glamor, and excessive living.
 
But nobody seems to care; the more shows they give us, the more we watch.

Jeffrey Ressner writes that awards show are filling the gap left by old TV variety shows like Ed Sullivan and Danny Kaye. The public has an undying curiosity to see the stars acting as “themselves” – interacting with their fellow actors, families, and dates. Dick Clark, a producer of six different awards shows, told Ressner that “People wait to see somebody’s dress fall down, a stumble, a bumble, a faux pas. That’s the sadistic part of all of us.” We want to see actors cry, stutter, come down to our level. We want to feel that they’re human and these awards shows let us in, just a little.

I know I loved when Christine Lahti missed her name being called at the Golden Globe awards in 1998 because she was in the bathroom. It's reassuring for us mortals to find that actors have to use the bathroom too.  Fans saw a very pregnant Annette Bening at the Screen Actors Guild Awards this year talk about having children while maintaining a healthy working career. These are the moments that awards show fans tune in for – when the stars don't seem quite so glamorous and the road to stardom doesn't seem quite so far.

Complaints abound about the Academy Awards: it's over-the-top; too much money spent on too little talent; the million-dollar sets, the broadway-style dance numbers; a tired Billy Crystal doing his same old schtick, actors with too little talent getting too much credit, the best movies going unrecognized; too much glitz, not enough depth, and it's just too long. But despite the proliferation of awards shows, the Oscars remain one of the most watched shows on television.

Whether these ceremonies are serving to boost up a morally-lagging entertainment industry, to raise network ratings and advertising sales, or just to entertain a star-hungry public, they must be doing something right, because there is no sign of them stopping. And despite the hype and extravagence of it all, I know where I'll be the last Sunday in March, nominee list in hand.