The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was formed, in 1927, with a brief “to raise the cultural, educational, and scientific standards” of film. That noble purpose was sustained until July 12, 2013, the release date for “Grown Ups 2,” in which a frightened deer urinates on Adam Sandler’s face. In the animal’s defense, one could argue that it was merely taking movie criticism to a higher and more clarifying level. Nevertheless, “Grown Ups 2” will not feature when the Academy doles out its garlands, on March 2nd, even in Best Visual Effects.
What hope, then, for the standards of old? Could there still be cause for celebration? Well, like the nation, the Academy has its first African-American president; indeed, unlike the nation, it has its first female African-American president. Cheryl Boone Isaacs was elected in July, having proved her worth by masterminding the publicity campaigns that brought five Oscars to “Braveheart” and six to “Forrest Gump.” She is clearly a miracle worker, although change at the top, as Barack Obama would be the first to warn her, doesn’t logically lead to reformation below. Isaacs now heads an organization whose members, when polled by the Los Angeles Times two years ago, proved to be ninety-four per cent white and seventy-seven per cent male, with an average age of sixty-two, and artistic tastes to match. Remember the deliciously awkward stunt pulled by Chris Rock, when he hosted the Oscars, in 2005—taking a camera team to a Magic Johnson theatre in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, and asking patrons whether they had seen the nominees for Best Picture. Mostly, he drew a blank. Statistics show that, at this point, eighty-eight per cent of Academy members began to squirm.
If they look relieved these days, it’s because the rivalry of 2013 has turned hot, and because heat draws the customers like an open fire. We now have nine good movies jostling for Best Picture; we have a cluster of major stars; and, in “12 Years a Slave,” we have matters of historical weight being addressed not with an overcrowded slog (think of “Gandhi”) but with intimate concentration. Happiest of all, we have a box-office that is worthy of the occasion. The takings for “Gravity” have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, while “American Hustle” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” have earned sums that even their avaricious heroes might have deigned to pocket. Who knows, if Martin Scorsese’s film takes home a prize, its domestic receipts could yet sneak past those of “Grown Ups 2.” Only another twenty million to go.
All this bodes well for March 2nd, not least if you’re a television executive. Ideally, you want the folks watching your telecast to recognize the movies that are being fêted and the stars who are being mobbed. Bemused viewers are less likely to tune in, or stay tuned. Hence the ratings spike of 1998, when an audience of fifty-five million, fifteen million more than the year before, watched “Titanic” being raised to glory. A decade later, the numbers were down on the ocean floor, at thirty-two million. The Best Picture nominees that year were a distinctive crew: “Juno,” “Michael Clayton,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Atonement,” and—the winner—“No Country for Old Men.” But their total global returns, though healthy enough, amounted to a third of the pile that “Titanic” had amassed. As for the weird and wonderful creatures ascending the stage to collect their statuettes—Tilda Swinton, Marion Cotillard, Javier Bardem—who were these people? Where was Captain Jack Sparrow? How about the big yellow thing from “Transformers”? Or Shrek?
Unease of this kind has prevailed since 1953, the first year the Oscars were shown on TV—not just the new kid on the block, in the eyes of Hollywood, but a sign that the whole block was under threat. Bob Hope, the white-tied m.c. that evening, was on the defensive. “Television—that’s where movies go when they die,” he said, and the nervousness behind the gag has never subsided. If anything, it has deepened in recent years. You could argue, looking at the cast lists on HBO, that television is where movie stars go when their big-screen scripts start to die. Oscar night is anxiety central: TV needs the stars to light up the ratings, and the stars, for their part, use TV to stage what is, in essence, a communal bath of self-love. “Just a small group getting together for a pat on the back,” in the words of Janet Gaynor, who won the first Oscar for Best Actress, in 1929. Since then, the pat has become a caress, and the caress has grown into the kind of activity that in “The Wolf of Wall Street” is reserved for yachts and jets.
And yet, against all odds, the show goes on. Not just that: it has got itself a new warmup act, nuttier and more unflagging than Hope, Rock, and Johnny Carson combined. The Oscars, it turns out, are made for life online. The crunching of numbers, the groundless soothsaying, the venting of inexhaustible spleen: such are the habits on which we digitally thrive, and in the Academy Awards we have found the perfect place to unleash them. Whether Leonardo DiCaprio or Matthew McConaughey, or neither of them, will be crowned Best Actor is a matter of such brazen unimportance that we have gone crazy trying to call it. Wins in smaller arenas, like the SAG and the W.G.A., are browsed over like steaming entrails on the altars of ancient Rome. We have been introduced to “Oscarologists,” a previously unknown profession, and one Web site unveiled “exclusive charts that track how the Experts’ Oscar predictions have changed over time.” Not only are we looking forward to March 2nd; we are already looking forward to looking back in anger at the awards that confounded our hunches, at our loss of the office sweepstake, at the stop-start tears, the sagging jokes, and the normally rational women who choose, for one night only, to dress like exploded cupcakes.
All this is part of the fun. In fact, to decry it, even as we sit transfixed, is often more fun than the event itself, although the minds of true Oscar lovers will already be drifting elsewhere, to the sunlit uplands of 2015. Will it be “Gone Girl” or “Interstellar,” or maybe Clint Eastwood’s “Jersey Boys”? No one has seen these movies, because they are not yet finished, but so what? Opinions must be formed. Bets should be laid. The race is on. ♦
