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And the winner is…who cares?
- betwixthewires 5y agoI can tell you why the ratings for award shows is failing. And nobody that can change it is going to listen, and nobody that would listen is in a position to change it. I am going to be a little crude with this one, which I refrain from doing on this site, because it is the proper linguistic tool to adequately articulate what is going on here. People don't want to be lectured about climate change by someone right before they hop on a private jet to Belize to fuck underage hookers of various genders. We don't want holier than thou bullshit from someone who sucked every dick they had to to get onto that stage. We don't care what they all think of each other's substance devoid, propaganda infested mediocre productions. People don't want to watch a bunch of worthless scum in ten thousand dollar dresses circle jerk each other and pat each other on the back in between raping each other. I don't need a fucking juggling monkey telling me the proper way to wipe my god damn ass.
- HPsquared 5y agoThe 20th Century brought broadcast media and mass-market advertising any publishing, which promoted a "single-stream" model of mass culture. With the internet, these technological limitations have been overcome.
- juancn 5y agoIMDB et. al. also hurt them a lot. I don't care if it won an Oscar, Emmy, whatever... IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes are a better indicator of quality. Heck, the Netflix algorithms usually do a better job.
- daodedickinson 6y agoI never cared who "won".
- input_sh 6y agoTo be fair, the amount of people in my country that cared about the Oscars this year beats the previous 10 or so combined. Only because we hoped that a local film would be our second winner of the foreign language award. I just looked it up and haven't heard of a single best picture nominee.
- nindalf 6y agoGuessing you’re Romanian (Collective) or Bosnian (Quo Vadis, Aida)?
- input_sh 6y agoYup, Bosnian. We won one in 2001 IIRC. I also happen to know Aida the movie is loosely based on and have been on the set on one occasion. Didn't even imagine it would be an Oscar nominee in a few years.
- nindalf 6y agoI know the feeling about being excited about the foreign language oscar. It happens in my country too if we get a nomination. I'll be sure to check out Aida!
- joecasson 6y agoThe Sound of Metal was a truly fantastic movie. I haven't seen the others either, but I highly recommend that one. Riz did a terrific job.
- TedShiller 6y agoOscars have become too political. This further erodes interest in it. In 2021 it’s too easy being political. Not being political would be interesting.
- kristianc 6y agoPolitical in what sense? In the mid-90's the Best Picture was won, successively, by Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, and Braveheart. Each of those had a pretty solid political viewpoint, and I'd imagine the ratings were pretty high for those Oscar ceremonies. More likely, as the article says, we're living in a multi-channel world now where people have the choice to tune in, or not, to these monolithic cultural touchstones.
- croon 6y agoAll culture has always been political, the only thing that's changed is people taking offense at it.
- krapp 6y agoPeople taking offense at politics hasn't changed either. George Carlin was doing bits on cancel culture (what used to be called "political correctness") forty years ago.
- croon 6y agoFair enough, everything old is new.
- wccrawford 6y agoCancel culture is political correctness, but applied to a person's entire history, always. Being angry at something someone just did is not cancel culture. But when you look at something someone did 20 years ago and they've already apologized and learned from it, but then still insist they not have a job because of it, that's cancel culture. Cancel Culture is the opposite of "the right to be forgotten". But you're correct that people have always taken offense at politics. I can't imagine that ever wasn't the case.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoNowadays you have: superhero movies, sequels, remakes, empowerment of certain groups that aren't me, movies with a political message, or some sad dour art house movie that makes you walk out feeling bummed out about life. Compare 1994 or 1999 movie releases to 2021. Fight club, the matrix, forrest gump, Magnolia, office space, sixth sense, american beauty, clerks, etc. Nowadays: the father?, Mank?, black messiah, , chicago 7? It's not about creating magical new worlds with thought provoking ideas anymore. Maybe I'm explaining it poorly but film seems to have gone the way of the music industry. Commodified instead of inspired. I LOVE going to the movies. I just wish there was something I wanted to see.
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- rob74 6y agoYeah, movies nowadays largely belong to two groups, with not much in between: (1) the brainless mass-market type (comic/video game adaptation, remake etc.) which (hopefully) make money, but don't stand a chance at the Oscars (except for rare exceptions like 2019's "Joker"), and (2) the "arthouse" type, which feel like an application for an Oscar nomination, but are not really commercially successful.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoI agree with your two categories. Everything in the art house world is like a dour sad soap opera nowadays jamming the problems of the world in your face for 2 hours. Look at most of the nominees this year. They just looked like sad bleak soap opera type movies that I'm going to walk out of feeling bummed out.
- Apocryphon 5y agoWasn't Joker supposed to be arthouse? Like a modern version of Taxi Driver.
- amelius 6y agoTry mubi.com (not affiliated)
- MisterBastahrd 6y agoCan you blame the public? The Grammy's have always been years behind the listening audience. I have no idea why the Tony awards are even televised given that the show is tailor made for rich folks in New York. The Emmys will continue to lose relevance as the television landscape continues to fragment under the leadership of corporations hellbent on creating little streaming kingdoms. Even the Oscars... every year we get presented with 4 or 5 movies that are tailor-made for winning awards, not for being good movies. It's like watching a dog show: the dog that wins is winning because he's got all the characteristics that judges have deemed to be perfect for that breed of dogs, not because the dog is actually good at doing anything. If the average person doesn't even care about your nominees, then why the hell would they care about watching a show giving them awards?
- paxys 6y agoThe only thing more consistent than the annual entertainment industry award shows is the barrage of "no one cares about the Oscars/Emmys/Grammys/XYZ anymore" articles right after. These awards have only ever had one purpose – for the industry establishment to pat each other on the back and gatekeep outsiders, and that is as relevant today as it was 20 or 50 years ago. They have never been about evaluating quality of content. And there's no point showing the same graphs of falling ratings, because, like all other forms of entertainment nowadays, more and more people are streaming these shows and/or watching parts of it later on their own schedule.
- MisterBastahrd 6y agoThese shows are to sell movies / videos / CDs / subscriptions. They are hours-long infomercials wrapped up in gowns and tuxedoes telling you what you should watch and listen to and buy if you haven't already. Parasite is a perfect example. The last subtitled movie Americans sat through with any sort of audience capacity was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Without the Oscar hype, that movie is a flop in the US. But because it got that hype, people were trying to watch it any way they could, even if that meant spending extra on a streaming service to watch it from home.
- HPsquared 6y agoThere's just an absolute glut of entertainment now, the market is saturated.
- bumblelad 6y agoWhat broke my spirit as a young kid getting into animation was the discovery that nobody at the Oscars basically gives a shit about animation. Flat out. 'Judges' willingly admit they don't see cartoons as anything but for kids and will regularly not even watch all of the nominees...aside from the Disney cartoons with their kids in theaters. Hence why Disney always wins animation awards. So imagine my disillusion when discovering the great stuff that came out from Japan or France, to lose to the crap by-the-numbers musical cartoons churned out by Disney for the last ~30 years. This does create a problem though, because while nobody gives a shit about industry awards, they do generate hype and interest (and sales). And these sales generate future projects. Nobody is going to basically attempt an animation project aimed at adults when they know they can't get it marketed as anything but for kids, and even then, always play second fiddle to Disney. And hence, animation is effectively all but dead in America. You have your Rick and Mortys and Frozens and not much else.
- mavhc 6y agoAward shows were invented as a way to not pay people more/give them more power
- hoppyhoppy2 6y agoDon't widely-recognized awards tend to lead to greater pay and power in one's career? I'd much rather be awarded an Oscar than a spot on my employer's "Actor of the Month" plaque... A Nobel Prize, as an example, is not significant because it comes with an earth-shattering amount of money or power. But the prestige associated with it can certainly help one's career, which often comes with more pay and power.
- Beldin 5y agoFor Oscars, probably yes. For Nobel Prizes, not so necessarily. The Physics one tends to be awarded for stuff done one or more decades ago. E.g. Peter Higgs got his after retirement. Unlike the Turing award and at least some Nobel prizes, Oscars are awarded for one performance, within one year of the performance.
- mavhc 5y agoThat's one person rather than everyone who's working in the industry though, much cheaper
- durnygbur 6y agoThe magnitude of how nobody cares about Oscars and soccer ball-kickers in the last 12 months is astonishing. It's my dream come true but I had been aware how little possible it was. I don't know their surnames, don't know the movie titles, also have no idea what Ronaldo and Messi are up to. Let's keep it this way in the New World Order?
- sharken 5y agoUnfortunately it requires that we accept too intrusive restrictions to our daily lives. Those restrictions are now being rolled back and removed state by state, which is a good thing. From the reactions there have been so far, it seems that a lot of people still care about at least soccer.
- fmajid 6y agoI was pleasantly surprised by how this year I was able to avoid encountering any of the drumbeat of publicity that precedes this tedious circle-jerk of narcissism until it was over.
- oxymoran 6y agoThey just chose new vapid distraction instead of the old vapid distractions. I’d rather have them watching sports, at least it can unite people in camaraderie.
- thepasswordis 6y agoNobody wants to tune in and get lectured by a giant group of multimillionaires who have declared themselves as “essential” so they could bypass the rules which are bankrupting millions of people across the country and throw themselves a party congratulating themselves. Imagine my shock.
- CountDrewku 6y agoAfter seeing that woman in LA who had her restaurant shut down while there was a giant tent being erected across the street for Hollywood elites to eat in my disgust for the entire industry has increased ten fold. These people have too much power in our society. The gall of them to get up and lecture us....
- isoskeles 6y agoI'm more disgusted with state and local governments in CA, and Gavin Newsom in particular, but that event was quite illustrative of the problem.
- CountDrewku 6y agoWell yes he/the government deserves a lot of the blame but he's bowing to an industry with so much wealth and power that they have more sway over politics than the average citizen. The obvious fix is to not vote these people in to office but I realize that's not so easy as it sounds.
- kurthr 6y agoI kinda agree... but to be fair, her business customers are random people from a huge reservoir of untested individuals who will come and go as they please, while the production business is a smaller group of regularly (daily) tested individuals who will be yelled at and possibly delay production, if any of them test positive. I wish that LA/CA/USA had bothered to actually mandate contact tracing, and that "outdoor" dining had been given more priority. LA at the time was suffering a huge wave of infections that literally overwhelmed their hospitals, although most of them were from more densely housed "essential" workers (factories, farm, cleaning). Also, Americans suck at masking... pretty much all them, maybe because culturally they are taught to only care about themselves and not anyone else.
- kumarvvr 6y agoPeople have really been addicted to their phones. I see no other reason. All pointers ought to have to do something with the screen time of the average phone user. Gone are the days where people schedule for a tv show or an award show. They know that the highlights, bites and funny clips will be on Youtube in a few days or even the same day. Going forward, we could see tremendous loss of global productivity, just because young go-getters are wasting their time on phones. Every activity of a mobile phone users life is swinging around phone usage. Traveling to work, better take bus and watch a video on the way. Free time at work, catch up on facebook. Sitting on the toilet, what is an hour or so of browsing Reddit even after bowels are empty. The future is scary, lazy and unproductive.
- erulabs 6y agoIs the implication here that sitting to watch the entire award show would be... _more_ productive and _less_ lazy?
- kumarvvr 6y agoNo definitely not productive and just as much waste of time. But the avenue for wasting time is limited to that 1 or 2 hours. But now, its 24/7 Basically, the distractions 10 years prior were limited. Now the distractions are in your face all the time, tempting and calling all the time.
- drewzero1 6y agoIt definitely used to be easier to schedule around big shows and sports games. (That is, schedule a trip to the store or nice dinner somewhere while so many other people were watching TV.) I think some people just hate phones, and some of it may well be justified, but I don't see what's so unproductive about using your phone on the bus instead of just staring off into space like we used to. I used to stay up late to sit on the couch and watch SNL, now I can watch clips while doing dishes during the week and go to bed at a normal time. It's by definition a more productive use of my time, unless I allow myself to spend too much time scrolling looking for a video.
- jwilber 6y ago“ Years of sliding ratings have sparked calls to jazz up the Oscars, a three-hour backslapping fest stuffed with commercial breaks.” The most accurate description of the Oscars I’ve read.
- smoldesu 6y agoI think the growing sentiment is that these "famous" people are becoming increasingly belittled in the age of the internet. Why care about the Oscars when you could hop on Snapchat and see what your friends are up to, or go take a warm candlelit bath. The market for this sort of entertainment is waning, and even the millennial watchers are mostly there to make fun of it. In many ways, this was always the expected outcome for democratizing art.
- majormajor 6y agoPeople love famous people on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram. They just have a different pipeline to fame than TV/Film does.
- brundolf 6y agoThe "new famous"
- csomar 6y agoIt was not possible to suit everyone's taste in a TV, after all you had a limited amount of airtime and you needed a few figures. It would help that these figures are brainless and sexy so that you can get everyone on board. Youtube changed that. Now you can watch what you are interested in, instead of that single thing being fed on TV. You like a particular animal? (Otters), there is a person in Japan dedicated to his otter and makes frequent high-quality videos about it. Hollywood lost control of the narrative, but not because of their sloppy work. Internet and high-bandwidth changed the game and they are unable to adapt.
- ergot_vacation 6y ago"You like a particular animal? (Otters), there is a person in Japan dedicated to his otter and makes frequent high-quality videos about it." Ah, so you've fallen down the Aty rabbit-hole as well eh? Stuff like that makes me wonder though: everyone has this assumption that their experience on the web, and Youtube especially, is highly specific to them and what they watch, ie the "Filter Bubbles" concept. And yet over the past couple years, on and offline, I keep hearing that other people are ending up on the same videos and channels I am. Aty is a good example: everyone seems to have seen a HUGE surge in cute animal videos being recommended over the past few months. It seems highly likely that Youtube isn't as organic as it seems, and that those running it are deliberately tilting the recommendation algo in favor of certain kinds of videos at certain times. This has some pretty insidious implications, as it's a kind of influence so subtle as to be almost imperceptible.
- AzzieElbab 6y agoOnly Ricky Gervais can save the oscars now. But seriously, hollywood had a brilliant idea to throw themselves an awesome annual party and make fans pays for it. Worked for a while but oh well
- SyzygistSix 5y agoRicky Gervais' critiques and jokes about Hollywood and celebrity culture are really on point. Which is why I rarely pay attention to most things coming out of Hollywood. Their disdain for ordinary people is matched by mine for the wealthy and celebrities.
- LargeWu 6y agoI see about 5 movies a year in the theaters; maybe 1 if you don't count children's movies. I listen to a lot of music, but almost none if it is music represented by the Grammy's. Of the Record/Song of the Year nominees, I was only familiar with one. Bottom line for me is that the content being put out by Hollywood and the big music labels is just not compelling enough for me to spend my attention on. Why, then, would I care what is the "best" of a bunch of art that is irrelevant to me?
- rednerrus 6y agoPart of the problem for the Oscars is there really aren't that many good movies now. The best writers and actors are mostly working in TV. If you're not into Alejandro González Iñárritu, Christopher Nolan, or Quentin Tarantino there really aren't a ton of options for you. When it comes to stars, here are the top 20 up and comers: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/next-gen-talent-2020-the-hollywood-reporters-rising-young-stars-revealed https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/next-gen-talent-2020... almost all of them come from the small screen. I don't see any Cary Grants, Brad Pitts, or Reese Witherspoons in this group. People who could carry a film with just their charisma. I love movies but TV is the new king.
- sheepybloke 5y agoCompletely agree. It's just a natural transition to where the best place to tell a story is at the moment. It was in movies, since that was the best way to tell an entire story and have someone watch the whole thing and get the character developments and story. But now, TV captures people much more deeply, especially with binging. On top of that, you have much more time to put in a more interesting story and fully developed characters, instead of rushing to fill everything into 2.5 hours (Justice League, anyone?). It's a trend we're going to keep seeing, and I for one love it!
- isoskeles 6y agoThat's an interesting list you posted, but I'd take it with a grain of salt as some form of an ad that those peoples' agents elbowed their way into. The only person on that list I recognize is the last woman, who plays one of the most boring characters on The Walking Dead.
- rednerrus 6y agoThe actor from Sex Education seems incredibly talented as does the actor from Santa Clarita Diet.
- iamdelirium 5y agoHave you thought of the fact that maybe you're not the target crowd for film/shows those actors are in instead of claiming BS.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MayeulC 6y agoAnd the article is... > Already signed up? Log in Who cares? I've got better things to read anyway.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago> To bypass travel restrictions, nominees and their guests have been designated “essential workers”. I don't even know what to say to this. Designated by whom? The whole expansion of essential work from medicine and food and literal essentials all the way to, well, the oscars has been a joke. We're in this awful middle ground of half-assed extreme measures. They're watered down enough to not stamp things out, but still followed enough to make us all miserable. It's the perfect anti-sweet-spot that maximizes the combination of virus spread and misery. Instead, we get this never-ending bucket of misery because everyone thinks they're an exception or just an insignificant single drop in the ocean.
- grecy 6y ago> Designated by whom? The biggest marketing department in the world - Hollywood. It's an enormous profit generating machine and won't let silly travel restrictions get in the way.
- ku-man 6y agoHollywood is also the most successful exporter of American culture and values.
- matz1 6y agoThis is why travel restrictions or “essential workers" designation are ridiculous. It doesn't help, only mostly cause misery.
- koolba 6y ago> I don't even know what to say to this. I do: fuck em’ These are the same people that wouldn’t let businesses open up for outdoor dining while studios were allowed to bring in catering services right next door: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/us/outdoor-dining-la-protest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/us/outdoor-dining-la-prot... These are the same people that ban you from outdoor dining yet they have no issue with gathering indoors: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-03/skelton-edd-inmate-unemployment-fraud-scandal-french-laundry-embarassment https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-03/skelton-... I’m sure I’d never agree with everything an elected leader does, but I’ll have a lot more respect for the choices if they’re enforced uniformly and, in particular, if they apply them to their own lives.
- protomyth 6y agoAn award show that goes hard core on insulting half the country in every speech while winning awards for movies that often have a very limited audience and they wonder why people don't watch. They mystique is gone, we see these folks every day in aspects of our lives not limited to entertainment. What's special about this ceremony anyway?
- ku-man 6y ago"What's special about this ceremony anyway" Pretty people, pretty dresses, (happiness?). Things you will never experience with your 9.5 $/hour salary.
- tyre 6y ago> goes hard core on insulting half the country in every speech What are you referring to?
- kickout 6y agoAssuming you are asking in good faith: I am guessing they are referring to Hollywood generally having a liberal political mindset and many things the left has been championing lately have been upsetting the right. Basically more evidence of our society being hyper-politicized or perceiving it that way.
- Apocryphon 5y agoSometimes it feels like everyone in the past five years have forgotten about the Bush years. The political polarization in pop culture was just as pronounced then, with Fox News attacking Hollywood as antiwar traitors, Hollywood films skewering Evangelicals as fanatics, etc. The culture wars then were just as bitter and seemingly unbridgeable it they are now, we just didn't see it unfolding in realtime yet. Usually you'd have to wait for a pingback from your Blogspot articles first.
- kickout 5y agoMostly true. I remember the Bush years well. I agree the instantaneous feedback of social media was in its infancy or non-existent so there was a modicum of civility to people's arguments/disagreements. The talk radio pundits and cable tv people were probably 1 or 2 level shy of 'extreme' whereas we're 1 or 2 levels _over_ extreme these day--on both sides. I could be misremembering though.
- hardwaregeek 6y agoMaybe the Oscars should just become a proper film festival. They're definitely starting to align with the major festivals, Parasite having won the Palm d'Or and Nomadland the Golden Lion. Maybe they should just go that route. It will be admitting defeat in some ways. Alternatively...stream the damn event on platforms people actually use. I don't want to sign into ABC one time every year to watch the stupid event. And I especially don't want to sit through regular commercial breaks. Transition to a different revenue model and have YouTube/Netflix/Facebook host it. Ffs you could make it a Twitch stream and it'd do better.
- lupire 5y agoThe Oscars exist to burnish the Hollywood machine against film festivals. They only recognize small/niche films has needed to maintain a veneer of integrity.
- paulpauper 6y agoTHey shoud just call it the grannies instead, to show how out-dated and out of touch it is. MIddle-aged and young people have long stopped caring about it.
- bozzcl 6y ago> To bypass travel restrictions, nominees and their guests have been designated “essential workers”. I don't think I have to repeat what others have said here, this is pretty ridiculous. > Zooming in is banned, so simultaneous mini-events are to be held in London and Paris for those who can’t make it to Los Angeles. This is the part that baffles me, TBH. This is just ridiculously out-of-touch. Why would you forbid remote attendance during a goddamn pandemic!?
- JustSomeNobody 6y agoNever understood why anyone cared even before COVID. I like movies and such. I recommend the ones I like to people. Popular actors make decent money. Why should I care beyond that?
- Vaslo 5y agoAs Billy Crystal once said when he hosted: “Nothing can take the sting out of the world’s problems like watching millionaires present gold statues to each other.”