"The Irrelevance of Oscar Night?" Revisited

This year's Oscars had me looking back at a piece I wrote in 2012 about the ceremony's declining relevancy in the wake of that year's particular ceremony. I have since had occasion to question that critical comment. (David Walsh, who was himself no great fan of the 2012 Oscars, made an interesting case about the overstatement, and dubious motives, behind much of the criticism in the media after the March 2012 awards show.) Still, I do stand by what I had to say about the ceremony generally--its overlong and (as Ludlum might have had it) "robotic pavane"-like character, its being only one of an ever-growing host of awards shows, the gap between the kinds of movies that principally win Oscars and the ones "people actually see," etc.--as well as those more specific matters I discussed at length, namely the waning of the romance of cinema, the "cult" of the film star, and the centrality of Hollywood within the entertainment-media world, all of which seems to me even truer of the present moment than of a decade ago.

Certainly the decline of the theatrical experience's importance for the film-viewer has continued unabated. People still went to the movies about four times a year on average just before the pandemic, and I think that moviegoing is well along the course of recovering toward that level. Still, more than ever what people see when they go to the theater are the giant, flashy blockbusters--the movies that, as John Milius put it, offer a "cheap amusement park ride." The experience of character and narrative, their particular pleasures--the emotionally resonant experiences that become the stuff of romance and nostalgia--ever less have a locus here. Instead, when people do experience them it is ever more the case that they do so while looking at a small screen, which has ever more been the place to go for "serious drama," and just about anything else but the superhero-type fare.

So has it also gone with the cult of the film star whose decline I thought was an important factor here. Back in 2012 people were just noticing the failure of new stars to emerge. In 2023 the fact has long been taken for granted. Indeed, considering the list of most searched-for celebrities I am struck by how the figures of an earlier era retain a fascination for the Internet-using public completely overshadowing that of any newer celebrity. For example, Megan Fox's "it girl" status seemed unremarkable in the late '00s--indeed, the phenomenon was not only familiar and expected, but her time as such relatively short, due to a very hard fall as Hollywood and its courtiers and claqueurs in the entertainment press retaliated for her daring to speak ill of a major director when the "sacred" publicity rituals in which she was a participant called for flattering banalities--but there has been nothing like that run since. And indeed, if she would be very unlikely to make any list of the biggest stars in the world "Megan Fox" remains in the 200 top keyword searches at last check--and Megan Fox, in the ranking of searched-for celebrities, behind only Kim Kardashian, Carmen Electra, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Aniston, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson and Scarlett Johansson, among whom only Johansson would seem to owe much of the attention she gets to any films she has appeared in lately (and those, largely an extension of her having established herself in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Black Widow way back in 2010). Meanwhile the absence of any newer personality in "the club" is conspicuous in what is very much a sign of the times.

And of course, it is ever less the case that anyone can pretend that Hollywood is the center of the entertainment universe--with China overtaking the U.S. as the world's biggest film market, and that market's ticket sales largely reaped by China's own productions (as the country's own industry finds itself in a position to back full-blown blockbuster-type fare); with the "Korean wave" going from strength to strength (Korean films routinely beating out Hollywood's biggest in its own considerable home market and scoring overseas); with the Indian film industry booming (as "Tollywood" joins Bollywood, the country big enough for two Hollywoods!); with even in the U.S. films based on popular anime series' reliable enough earners to get significant releases (Demon Slayer taking in $50 million in the U.S. itself amidst the pandemic as homegrown American blockbusters struggled to make as much!); among much, much else going on in just the cinematic world. Meanwhile in the streaming age the number of channels explodes toward infinity, with those international presences counting for just as much here, with Korea's Squid Game becoming Netflix's biggest hit ever, as much of the world binges on Turkish soap opera--all as streaming companies owned by non-Hollywood firms like Netflix and Apple play an ever-bigger role in financing TV and movies at home and abroad. The result is that, even more than a decade ago, Hollywood seems an ever-smaller part of the total scene, and, if every now and then it recognizes that other countries make movies too (as when it awarded Parasite Best Picture in 2020), ever more provincial in its attitude--a principally national, traditional industry awards show in an ever-more globalized and variegated scene.

Still, it seems to me that this does not by any means exhaust the issue, with the politics of our time possibly mattering more now than they did in 2012. Again, popular culture has always been politicized--and in spite of the peddling of a nostalgia that, in contrast with that of cherished memories of movie magic in the theater, is undeniably pernicious, there has never been a time, at least in the memory of anyone living, when this or any other major society on the surface of the planet was not polarized. However, those conflicts would seem to have gained a sharper edge, with the U.S. no exception, and in such a way as to alienate many from the movie industry. Given the media's ever-attentiveness toward the lamentations of the right what we are most likely to hear of is right-wing disgust with Hollywood "wokeness," but it is the case that other elements are at work, like a broader reaction against an elite--certainly to go by the reaction to the "discovery," or rather the umpteenth rediscovery, of Hollywood nepotism by the apparently profoundly clueless users of social media. Indeed, shocked by their shock I found myself remembering David Graeber's suggestion in his book of a few years ago that a good deal of the hostility toward the "coastal elite" from working people was, apart from the way in which they looked down on them "as knuckle-dragging cavemen," the way in which they monopolized any opportunity to make a living while "pursuing any other sort of value" besides pure money-making for themselves and their offspring, with Graeber singling out Hollywood for particular criticism. As he remarked, one is unlikely to find among "the lead actors of a major motion picture nowadays" anyone who "can't boast at least two generations of Hollywood actors, writers, producers, and directors in their family tree." Indeed, "the film industry has come to be dominated by an in-marrying caste." The results of that--which I dare say extend to the artistic output of an American film and television industry testifying to their being profoundly out of touch with, and even disdainful, of the broader population ("I can't pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year" said an Oscar winner whose job is literally all about pretending)--should not be lightly discounted.