In 1978, the same year he won the best director Oscar for \Annie Hall,"" Woody Allen said that, ""I have no regard for that kind of ceremony. I just don't think they know what they're doing. When you see who wins those things-or who doesn't win them-you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is."" Needless to say, Allen was not present to accept the award. Even if one doesn't totally agree with Allen's views, few would argue that the Oscars are indeed a mixed bag. At their best, they're a celebration of the greatness of movies. At their worst, they're a self-congratulatory fashion show.
To be fair, the Academy Awards always disappoint someone, no matter how hard they try. When a commercial juggernaut of a film such as ""The Return of the King"" wins best picture, the artsy crowd denounces the Oscars as being too commercial. When a film with a smaller box office impact such as ""The English Patient"" wins, the Academy gets accused of being out of touch with the public. There are rarely decisions that are universally acknowledged as being deserving, but that is the nature of artistic awards to begin with.
Ultimately, the artistic or ideological aims of the Academy are forgivable. It is the actual ceremony itself that is usually the most cringe-inducing. Celebrities with no knowledge of anything outside of how many zeros are in their paycheck saunter up to the podium to hand out awards to technical experts who worked 10 times longer than they did and for a fraction of the price. The worst aspect of the show is the self indulgence. Somehow producers think that people want to see every living best actor or actress winner line up on stage. Or that audiences long to see an interpretative dance number set to the five nominated musical scores.
Some of these spectacles might sound good on paper, but then you realize that they take forever, and they're usually superficial. It's events like these that come off as Hollywood's love letter to itself, a shallow narcissism that is supposed to prove to everyone how great the Oscars are. One can almost hear Hollywood producers saying to themselves, ""You know, the majority of movies we released this year were sequels or clich??d tripe aimed at teenagers, but when we get all these prestigious people together and look at the few studio films that were actually great movies, we look pretty damn good!""
Fortunately, there are merits to the Oscars. They're the unexpected moments, the ones that usually aren't publicized ahead of time. They're the surprise appearances of celebrities like Christopher Reeve, who had recently been paralyzed but still came to the ceremony in 1996 to introduce a montage about socially important films. They're the presentations of the Irving Thalberg award, in which lifetime achievements are given to those who truly deserve it, such as this year's recipient Sydney Lumet (""Network,"" ""12 Angry Men""). Perhaps the most tangible evidence of the Oscar's importance was Tom Hanks' 1994 acceptance speech for ""Philadelphia,"" an eloquent and moving oration in which he stated that, ""My work is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels. We know their names; they number a thousand for each red ribbon we wear here tonight.""
Sadly, the 45 second acceptance speech limit imposed on winners by the Academy has probably eliminated the possibility of a speech like that ever happening again. But there is always the chance that something special or socially redeeming will happen at the Oscars, even if the program is mostly self-congratulatory rubbish. Even Woody Allen, who had won three Oscars but never attended a ceremony, finally appeared at the Academy Awards in 2002 in a plea for filmmakers to continue to shoot in New York City after the 9/11 tragedy. It's the unexpected, unscripted moments that redeem the Oscars, and one can only hope that this year's ceremony has at least one or two in store.
Dan Marfield's column runs every Monday. If you'd like to watch the Oscars with him this Sunday, email him at ddmarfield@wisc.edu.
