Why do we do it to ourselves? Judging from the convention of grouchiness last night on Twitter, the limited patience of my companions (they gave up at 10:30), and the faces in the audience, no one much likes the Oscars. The four-hour show becomes an excuse for pointing up at the screen and loudly pronouncing subjective verdicts—“Oh, I like her!” (Reese Witherspoon); “She gets on my nerves!” (Anne Hathaway)—and eating too much pizza. Nonetheless, each and every year a rumored billion people trudge to the TV and sit through the Oscar telecast, even shedding a few tears. The whole thing is an oddly satisfying exercise in instant nostalgia: the year’s moving images become black-and-white stills before our very eyes. The show is a salute to the past, showing us the marks of time on beloved performers’ features, giving us a weird premonition of a future when the movies of our youths will have the dated look of talkies.
To me, the runway show before the telecast is the best part—not only for its opulent clothes but because it shows the mechanisms of fame at work. The hosts of the pre-Oscar show are breathy and obsequious; and there’s a sense of hysterical, celebratory urgency in the air. (During ABC’s pre-Oscar special, a timer flashed at the bottom corner of the screen, counting down the seconds ’til showtime.) The stars, meanwhile, must navigate the five-hundred-foot red carpet in their heavy gowns and towering heels, must speak smoothly and graciously about their fellow-actors, and must be charming yet aloof. It’s their masklike poise in the face of this loony carnival that makes them so alluring. I like to watch them mugging for the paparazzi, making minute adjustments, showing their best facial angles, pursing their shiny lips, turning this way and that. Between photographs, there’s a slight beat, and you can see these gods draw sharp little breaths, like the mortals they really are.
This year, armor-like, severe cuts were the vogue among women; hair was sheared off or tucked away on top of the head (no more prom-queen tendrils and few shaggy, long-haired styles). The simplicity and even austerity in the looks of our female stars was its own rebuke to Seth MacFarlane and his fratty jokes: these women are pros; they’re not here to play. As Judith Thurman wrote last year, the result is a loss of antic fun or risk in the dresses. This year, there wasn’t even much overt sexiness. The closest we got was Jennifer Lawrence, whose virginal white dress (tight sleeveless bodice yielding, a quarter of the way down her legs, to cake-like layers of billowing white and pink) cut against her smoky, slightly anarchic sexual presence. But for the rest, classic cuts and colors prevailed: Reese Witherspoon in a Louis Vuitton gown—royal blue with black trim at the sides that created the illusion of a fourteen-inch waist and showed off her energetically curvy figure; Amy Adams in a full-skirted, powdery gray silk Oscar de la Renta (I wish she’d go back to dressing like a mermaid in bright blues and greens); Charlize Theron with her new pixie-cut hair in a dazzlingly white pillar of a gown with a pointy, modernist neckline and demurely flared peplum at the waist. All three were sleeveless.
My nominees for best dressed were Jennifer Aniston, in a sumptuous red Valentino with a wide, floating skirt under which, she quipped, she could fit several more people (I like the return of the full skirt, which looks so much more comfortable than the dresses that hug the body all the way down); and Naomi Watts, in a sparkling pewter Armani gown with a surprising neckline—one side was a solid boatneck, but it trailed off, yielding skin and a sweetheart neckline on the other side. Both actresses have been through this ritual many times, and their outfits had the understated humor and casual flamboyance that comes with seasoned maturity. Speaking of maturity, Meryl Streep seems to be allowing herself to go gray, or at least she didn’t take the time to dye her roots before the show. This was reassuring: when you work hard enough, eventually, you can stop dressing the part.
Read Amy Davidson on Seth MacFarlane’s hostile hosting, John Cassidy on rational reasons to watch the ceremony, and more Academy Awards coverage.
Photograph by Jason Merritt/Getty.
