The tide has turned in the awards show game.
1. The Stuffy Factor
There was a time when Hollywood could pull off formality. Back when it was a city of grown-ups who felt more at home in formal wear then they did in pajamas and looked believable at an affair built on dignity and prestige. That ship, to put it mildly, has sailed. The Hollywood of today is in the business mainly of making films for children and teenagers — and it shows.
Each year the Academy takes another run at "updating" the concept of a stuffy awards ceremony, and each year, because it insists on holding onto that stuffy when its time has passed, it fails.
Forcing the people is of Hollywood to put on formal wear, sit up straight, listen to three hours of speeches and clap politely is cruel and unusual. The Globes, on the other hand, makes no claims of importance and is just there to have fun. Those who dive into sanctimony on the Globes stage do so at their own peril.
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2. Whose Prize Is It Anyway?
The case is often made that the Oscars are the "real" awards show while the Globes are just some "fake" event thrown together by a collection of 90 foreigners of dubious journalism credentials trying to get their hands on a little TV ad money.
The motives ascribed to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association may be entirely true, but one asks, what are the Oscars? The Oscar reception was thrown together in 1929 as a way for the entertainment industry to honor and promote itself. All well and good, but why does the public need to accept that the industry is best qualified to judge what's best about itself? If you look at Hollywood's output lately, you might think industry professionals are the last people who should be judging what's a great film or performance. So why not let 90 foreign journalists be the judges?
Image by Awards Society
3. Booze Schmooze
Makes everything better and everyone cheerier. Forcing Academy members to sit still parched and hungry for three-plus hours has its appeal in a Fear Factor sort of way. But letting the stars eat — and get drunk — is both humane and makes for a happier show. And why would you ever not want moments like this?.
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4. Host Busters
For the past two decades, the impossible task of trying to insert a bit of humor into a ceremony as self-serious and stuffy as the Oscars has been a suicide mission for comedians from David Letterman to Jon Stewart and Chris Rock, who have seen their stars plummet after their hosting stints. It only got worse when the Academy took the chance at letting non-comedians try their luck — as the ill-fated Anne Hathaway/James Franco pairing proved.
Stepping in as the Globes first front man to the previously un-hosted show, Ricky Gervais may have been hit or miss in his one-liners, but he set a tone of enforced irreverence that served the show well. This year, the Globesseems to have hit pay dirt with the most zeitgeisty pairing imaginable of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Oscar, on the other hand, with the wild card of Seth MacFarlane, still seems to be grasping at straws.
