Trying to please too many conflicting audiences ensures the academy will keep trying upsetting ideas.
As you’ve probably heard, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences can’t do anything right.
At least that might be your impression if you believe the blitz of bad news that has jammed traditional and social media this year.
As next Sunday’s 91st Academy Awards broadcast looms, we’re being reminded that the Oscars organization:
It’s nothing new for Oscar’s embattled caretakers. In recent years, the Academy has endured:
So the Oscars, like a poorly plotted disaster movie, are in perpetual crisis mode.
“Are the Oscars still relevant?” rhetorically asked Sasha Stone, editor and main content-provider for the Oscar-tracking website awardsdaily.com. “I think we’re going through such a major shift in our culture that the Oscars seem to fit better in how things used to be, rather than how things are changing and how things are.
“The hivemind pressure on them to satisfy every requirement, to right all the wrongs of society and satisfy every person whining and complaining about them is just too much pressure,” Stone said, “compared with what they were designed to do.” Which was, of course, to celebrate and promote the best work being done in film.
But that mission dates back to a time well before television entered the picture — and the annual push for the three-hour-plus telecast to earn glowing reviews, boost ad revenue and make industry moguls smile by driving dollars to their properties.
Decisions to feed those often conflicting beasts, however, can help alienate:
Most of this year’s crises are being driven by money – and by extension, the show’s ratings.
Last year’s 26.
