Movie Natters: February 23, 2007 Archive

A weekend proposal: don't watch the Oscars

Posted at 4:35 PM on February 23, 2007 by Euan Kerr (2 Comments)

I rarely watch the Oscars. The show is always tedious with all the teases ("Next: two actors you've vaguely heard of read a teleprompter badly!") and commercials.

Sometimes at the end of the evening I'll dip in just to see who gets the big awards, but generally the show's running late, and I wander off.

Even if I catch "Best Director," or "Best Film," I'm invariably left with the feeling of "so what?" Really now, what does this matter to me?

It's a big deal to the winner of course. It's a big honor, and likely big money too at the box office, video store, and on-line DVD outlet.

But to me as an individual film-lover? Really? Not a lot.

There's no real discussion of what makes film X better than film Y. The votes are cast by people we don't know, based on factors they don't explain. The only common interest really is perpetuating the flow of money into Hollywood.

A media professor once told me to remember the product of the television industry is not programming, it's audiences. That's what the networks can sell. People watching the Oscars are products who are being marketed other products.

You know the results will be on the radio, the net, TV, and in the papers, along with pictures of the best and worst celebrity dresses, the best and worst celebrity quotes, and the best and worst jokes told by Oscar host Ellen Degeneres. You can get the full info in minutes.

So here's my suggestion. Why watch hours of TV where people are trying to sell you stuff, interspersed with 10 second clips of movies which you have already seen, when you can actually sit down and watch a film, either in a cinema or at home?

Enjoy the celluloid experience rather than have some people on the coast try to tell you what you should be watching. And then go out and talk to your friends and neighbors about it.

Support film by avoiding the Oscars!

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