I use to truly get excited for the Oscars during the 90's. I was twelve years old in 1998 when Ben Affleck and Matt Damon won best screenplay for "Good Will Hunting". It was exciting because I loved that movie and a lot of the nominations were movies I had actually seen that year. "Titanic", "As Good As It Gets", and so on. Fast forward eighteen years later and something is definitely missing from the ceremony. It was a little thing called magic.
Now this has to be the most unbiased opinion about the 2016 Academy Awards because I didn't watch it. I didn't get a bunch of beer or make snacks this year because the show was ruined when #Oscarsowhite started popping up all over social media. It's a shame that every single thing is made about race now because you would think in today's society that this wouldn't matter, but for some reason it does. Watching Chris Rock's opening monologue on the internet pretty much sealed my descision of whether to really care or not. Rock was hilarious no doubt, but when he was practically begging for actors of color to be casted in "better" roles was uncomfortable to watch. Now it isn't about the craft of being the best a film, it turned into a participation award ceremony from here on out.
This is an industry award show, that is all. Just like how the ESPYS are for players in the sports industry, it is about the best of the best. Just because someone isn't nominated doesn't mean that it is all about race. Today's P.C. police refuse to acknowledge how there are purely Latino and African American award shows that don't nominate any white people, but since no one of color was nominated for an Oscar the whole internet starts an uproar about it. Here is a better example, Von Miller was the Super Bowl MVP of 2016. Now is it racist since he is black and a white player wasn't awarded the MVP? If there was a threat of players not returning would everyone get an award to shut them up? If a white player was MVP so many times does it turn into #NFLsowhite?
And what would that tell people if a film from Netflix was up for an Oscar? Just like how ratings of prime time television has gone down after internet shows started being up for Emmys is that the public don't have pay for cable anymore to get quality entertainment. Why do you think the theater owners were against "Beasts of No Nation" being played on the big screen just long enough to make it for Oscar guidelines before streaming. Because you are telling people you don't need to spend $10 on a ticket to go to a theater when you can just spend $7.99 a month and see all the movies you want from your couch. When Netflix movies start getting nominated that will be the beginning of the end for art house films.
The Academy has noticed that viewership has been going down over the years and that is why they started doing stupid gimmicks. Two hosts and ten best picture nominees weren't really enough to boost up ratings. The films and actors that do win may as well have played on Netflix before the show because no one really heard of them in the general movie going public. Just how next year we will get beaten over the head about how diverse Oscar is now and how much of a win it is now. For who?
The world is already an ugly place with all this political correctness going on. Cops are killers, white women can pretty much be any race they choose, and gay black men can shoot two reporters on live television and it turns into gun control, not mental illness. The Oscars were my refuge from all this kind of ugliness that I didn't care to see.
But I'm sure blogs like this one will be looked at as irrelevant when the same thing happens to the Oscars a few years from now.
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