On the evening of February 24, the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles will host the 91st edition of the Academy Awards.
You know the drill: there’ll be nominations, awards, performances, jokes. But for the first time in three decades, the ceremony won’t have a host. The last hostless-Oscars, in 1989, was severely panned – mostly for its confused, embarrassing 11-minute opening number – prompting 17 Hollywood celebrities (including Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, and Billy Wilder) to sign an open letter, deriding the telecast as an “embarrassment to both the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] and the entire motion picture industry”.
This year’s script was different though. Actor-comedian Kevin Hart was announced to headline the show. But a day later, his homophobic tweets resurfaced, causing him to withdraw. An opportunity to host a renowned award show, watched by millions, should be ideally coveted, but in recent years, has become the “least wanted job in Hollywood”.
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The 2019 edition of the Oscars has received bad press for some other notable reasons, too. The first was in August 2018, when the Academy introduced a new category, “achievement in popular film”. For decades, the Academy has taken pride in recognising and awarding the best talents in motion pictures. It also wants to be seen as a progressive organisation, quickly responding to the 2015 protests of #OscarsSoWhite, attempting to make it more inclusive.
Kevin Hart. Credit: Reuters
But here it was, pandering to the big movie studios, not unlike the Bollywood award shows that are nothing but a TRP circus. It of course made commercial sense: In the last four years, the Oscars’s ratings have taken a huge dip – dropping from 43.7 million viewers in 2014 to 26.5 million last year, the lowest in 44 years.
The backlash was swift and intense and the Academy withdrew the category.
But there was more confusion. On January 24, the Academy announced that only two of the five Best Original Song nominees would be performed at the ceremony – a bizarre move that snubbed the other contenders. A week later, the Academy changed its stance, asking all the nominees to perform, but not the full song, only a “truncated 90-second” version.
There was more fiddling around: the acting awards are conventionally presented by the last year’s winners, but this time, the Academy chose popular stars for the honour, indicating its rising anxiety over plummeting ratings. Less than a week later, the Academy reversed its decision again.
You’d think that would be the end of it – the haste, the mistakes, the backtracks – especially with the Oscars less than a month away. Turns out not: On February 12, the Academy announced that four award categories — cinematography, film editing, live-action short and makeup and hairstyling — would be presented during commercial breaks: a highly insulting decision that contradicted the very spirit of the evening.
There was another backlash, this time by the Hollywood bigwigs, including Alfonso Cuarón, the director of Roma (nominated for 10 Oscars), who tweeted: “In the history of cinema, masterpieces have existed without sound, without colour, without a story, without actors and without music. No single film has ever existed without cinematography and editing.”
In the history of CINEMA, masterpieces have existed without sound, without color, without a story, without actors and without music. No one single film has ever existed without CINEMAtography and without editing.
— Alfonso Cuaron (@alfonsocuaron) February 12, 2019
It’s not difficult to guess what happened next: the Academy backtracked again, issuing a statement that the ceremony would continue in its traditional, unedited format.
Which finally leaves us with the films. The Best Picture nominees make for an eclectic list: there’s BlacKkKlansman and Green Room, two movies examining America’s discomfiting racial history; a superhero film featuring a black comic book hero, Black Panther; two musical dramas, Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star is Born; a wacky, tradition-defying biopic of a controversial politician, Vice; a period drama, The Favourite; and a childhood memoir, Roma.
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But it can also be argued that this is the weakest line-up in years. Even the best films from the lot, with the possible exception of Roma, lack archival quality, diluting the hot anticipation that precedes an award ceremony like this.
But the Academy, still reeling from the recent setbacks, would hope for smaller triumphs: getting the basics right. With a show as big as the Oscars, this should be a given. But, in recent years, that hasn’t been the case.
An embarrassing blunder about the Best Picture recipient in 2017 – where a mix-up of envelopes resulted in La La Land being announced as the winner instead of Moonlight – indicates an overall sloppiness marring the Oscars of late.
An award show known for ostentatious celebrations, heartwarming clichés, and calculated grace finds itself in an unlikely spotlight. It’s slowly transforming from broadcasting stories to becoming a story. The Academy has three hours this Sunday to control that narrative.