If not for work, the only televised awards show ceremony I’d watch would be the Oscars (and even then, in recent years, I’ve started to get less and less excited about them).
It used to be that movie fans worldwide would, with much-anticipation, tune into the Oscars, and for that matter almost any awards show. The glitz! The glamour! Waiting to see what film wins Best Picture also meant something, both culturally and historically. Not anymore.
I was inspired to write this after Bret Easton Ellis’ scathing remarks about the Oscar industry:
The Oscars are a publicity machine created in the 1920s to give Hollywood a morally acceptable image […] I watch because I love movies and I'm interested in seeing the image that the Hollywood industry has of itself. The interest for me is who is named, who is not. What is going through the minds of people in this community?
This is more or less where I’m at right now when it comes to the Oscars. It’s a relic that’s going extinct, and yet, I can’t look away.
Will Smith slapping Chris Rock was just the icing on the cake. Even without Smith’s horrid assault, last year’s Oscars ceremony was already on its way to infamy. You kept checking the time, waiting for this poor miserable dog of a show to end. There was barely any entertainment to it, let alone actual investment. If anything, I imagine most Americans wished for more drama, more slapping, more cussing, anything to awaken the dead horse.
This year it happened again with safe frat boy jokes from host Jimmy Kimmel and a film that epitomizes the current state of modern US cinema (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”) winning most of the top categories.
If you read many of the same articles I did then you’d think the Oscars were back with a vengeance. The number that kept being repeated was a 12% increase in viewership when compared to last year’s ceremony.
Fine, this year it was 18 million, last year it was 16 million, but in the middle of a pandemic that had far less people going to the movies. This year the Academy tried, with the nominated films including blockbusters like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Elvis.” That helped.
Maybe it’s because Hollywood movies just aren’t as culturally relevant as they used to be. One can remember a time when Best Picture winners such as “Gladiator,” “Titanic,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Forrest Gump,” and “The Lord of the Rings” were actually seen by millions of Americans. Now? Who's actually seen “CODA”? “Nomadland”? These just aren’t films that Americans get excited about.
Sure, EEAAO made $60 million domestically, but that doesn’t mean it’s been embraced by mainstream moviegoers. I’ve spoken to so many people, non-film-industry types, who were puzzled by its win. They couldn’t even finish the movie.
It doesn’t help that people used to watch awards shows for the stars. The problem is that today’s movie stars are very different: It would be kind of hard to get Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Doctor Strange to walk down the red carpet in their spandex suits … unless Evans, Holland, Downey and Cumberbatch are game to do that.
It’s no surprise then that the Oscars have had flailing ratings this last decade. Yes, the 2023 telecast had an increase in viewership when compared to 2021 and 2022’s pandemic-inflicted ceremonies, but it still managed to be the third lowest-rated Oscar ceremony in history. Truth be told, ratings would have probably been lower without Smith slapping Chris Rock, a shocking moment that had friends messaging friends to tune in live.
Isn’t it strange how in 2014, not that long ago, viewership for the Oscars was at 40 million? That’s a loss of 22 million viewers when compared to this month’s ceremony.
The biggest factor in the loss of relevance though is that the idea of awards shows is now seen as this ridiculous concept. Watching the 1% showering the 1% with trophy love is just not something that’s compatible with our current societal zeitgeist.
The dip in audiences falls in line with every other awards show telecast losing viewers over the past few years. This past January’s NBC broadcast of the Golden Globes brought in the lowest ratings ever for the ceremony.
Don’t kid yourselves either, there’s no reason for ratings to go back up to those 2014 numbers. Ever again. People are tuning in less and less, but unless an expected slap occurs every year, and the oscars turn into the WWE, then this is a ship sinking quicker than the Titanic.
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.