Oscars escape


Glitz free: Some celebrities have suggested transforming the show from a typical awards ceremony into a telethon, raising funds for the affected community, members of the industry and firefighters. — AP

THERE has always been something a little gaudy, ostentatious and – if we’re being totally candid – tacky about awards season in Hollywood.

The Oscars began in May 1929 as a 15-minute industry dinner (free of any suspense, as the winners had been announced three months earlier) and ballooned in the following decades. Not only is it a three-plus-hour global event now, but it’s a months-long runway of non-stop prognostication, expensive “for your consideration” campaigns, and an ever-increasing slate of precursor awards. The extravagant spending, coupled with the sheer volume of egregious back-patting, can easily veer into “much ado about nothing” territory.

And such pageantry could seem less consequential, or even tone-deaf, with the city surrounding the event in ashes.

The still-raging Los Angeles wildfires, which have taken at least 27 lives and caused incalculable losses of homes and property, have already wreaked havoc on awards season, with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences twice postponing their nomination announcement (which later happened on Thursday).

Amidst all of this shuffling and reconfiguring, some have understandably raised an existential question: With the city that the industry houses in crisis, should the Academy mount an Oscar ceremony this year? And if so, what should it even be?

Some industry voices – including actor Jean Smart and author/screenwriter Stephen King– have advocated for not broadcasting or cancelling the Oscars entirely, respectively. King, the accomplished wordsmith, sums up the thinking with unsurprising succinctness: “No glitz with Los Angeles on fire.”

It’s an understandable instinct; it would be easy to observe the city’s millionaire celebs adorning themselves with expensive finery and priceless jewelry and extrapolate a none-too-subtle “let them eat cake” vibe. Balancing glamour and somberness is a tricky tonal exercise, and the entertainment industry is not always the best at reading the room.

The drawbacks to cancelling the Oscars, however, outweigh the virtues. When Smart suggests that outlets planning to broadcast the event should instead donate “the revenue they would have garnered to victims of the fires and the firefighters,” the logic circles back on itself.

The revenue of the Oscars and other events are generated solely by holding the ceremonies, televising them and selling advertisements throughout. Those potential donations disappear when the shows do. And so do the lucrative paychecks for the hundreds of stylists in charge of getting the stars red-carpet ready, the technicians and crew members tasked with staging and televising the ceremony and countless other worker bees in the awards-season hive.

The after-effects would be felt even outside the Dolby Theatre. Entertainment industry media outlets are financed, throughout the lean early months of the year, by “for your consideration” ads, while publicists and consultants generate much of their annual income working those campaigns.

If the Oscars go away, high-ranking executives aren’t the only ones who take a financial hit, and many of those who work in the industry and live in the affected areas cannot afford to take one right now.

For its part, the Academy has indicated that the show must go on, with CEO Bill Kramer telling the Los Angeles Times, “We feel that we must go forward to support our film community.”

This spirit aligns with the organisation’s history. In the near-century since their inception, the Oscars have always gone on, through world wars, social upheaval and worse. At most, they’ve been delayed – as in 1981, when the ceremonies were postponed by a day after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, or in 2021, when the ceremony (and eligibility period) was pushed back by two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Moreover, that 2021 show served as a reminder that the Oscar ceremony is malleable, with its producers (including Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh) staging the event as a more somber, intimate occasion, closer to the ceremony’s humble beginnings than its current iteration.

This year’s producers could take a page from that playbook. Some celebrities (including actor Rosanna Arquette) have suggested transforming the show from a typical awards ceremony into a telethon, raising funds for the affected community, members of the industry and firefighters.

It’s a good (and noble) idea, and the Oscar ceremony will undoubtedly take on a more serious tone – a more philanthropic approach is also likely. But it’s also likely, at risk of minimising the hardships and horrors of the wildfires, that those in attendance and those tuning in will not want to spend three hours wallowing in the loss and misery of themselves and others.

Instead, the Oscars might be wise to look at an earlier awards ceremony, mounted in similarly difficult circumstances: the 2001 Emmy Awards, televised live on Nov 4, delayed by seven weeks in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the commencement of the war in Afghanistan.

It was a sombre occasion, marked by tributes and pronouncements of patriotism, but with the understanding that, as guest Walter Cronkite noted, “entertainment can help us heal.”

And this should be the takeaway of this year’s Oscars. In troubled times, with our collective psyche in a state of constant tumult from political battles, economic woes and general national instability, the movies offer one of the most valuable services imaginable: escape.

Escape from our daily lives and concerns is an invaluable coping mechanism, allowing us to regroup and, through the power of empathy, understand.

And this escape – into fantasy and glamour and silliness – is perhaps the best service Hollywood could provide for itself. — Bloomberg Opinion/TNS

Jason Bailey is a film critic and historian whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Vulture, the Playlist, Slate and Rolling Stone.

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California , LA , fire , Oscars

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