Deeper Problems at the Oscars

Most people are understandably still talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in the face at last week's Oscar ceremony, after Rock made a tasteless joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's hair (she has alopecia or hair loss).  What Smith did was wrong, no doubt, but thinking back about that broadcast, I'd say that incident was the least of the Oscar ceremony's problems:

1.  First, what Smith did was indeed not noble but wrong.  We parents spend a lot of time teaching our little children to use words not hands to express their anger, however justified it might be.  An actor resorting to violence on a world-wide stage sends out a very bad message.

2. Smith did also use words to express his outrage at Rock, shouting "Keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth" to Rock several times.  Unfortunately, we here in America were deprived of hearing that.  ABC, ever fearful, like other broadcast networks, of FCC (Federal Communication Commission) fines, bleeped out the offensive tirade.  (Fortunately, it was heard in Australia and other places with less repressive regimes than the United States.)  And it also must be noted: the FCC does absolutely nothing about Fox News and its dissemination of outright lies about COVID and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine -- lies so grievous that it got Chris Wallace not to his contract with Fox, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to recommend Fox News.  Surely, those lies are not broadcasting "in the public interest" -- the lies about Covid vaccines and bogus "cures" have literally cost lives.  And maybe the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) should investigate the very name Fox "News" as a form of false advertising.

3. Speaking of COVID and the Russian invasion, neither received much mention at the Oscar ceremony.  COVID was actually the subject of an early joking skit.  Ok, but the pandemic is no laughing matter to the more than six million people around the world who lost their lives, and the millions more in their families.  Would've been appropriate to say something about COVID in the Oscar "In Memoriam" segment.

4. The same egregious oversight about the heroic Ukrainians fighting for their very lives and country marred the Oscar event.  Sean Penn suggested that Ukrainian President Zelensky be allowed to address the world via the Academy Awards ceremony.  Not only did that not happen, there was no official mention of the Russian attack of Ukraine at all, other than some silent words briefly up on a screen.  Ukrainian-born Mila Kunis alluded to but didn't mention by name the savage Russian invasion of her birth place. Were the presenters and winners told not to mention Ukraine?  It was left to Francis Ford Coppola to defiantly proclaim from the stage, "Viva Ukraine"!

All in all, though there were many very worthy winners, a sad shambles of an award ceremony

.

Anatomy of an Academy Award Error: The Video Shows Warren Beatty Was Almost a Hero

Warren Beatty has been roundly criticized for wrongly announcing that La La Land (not the actual winner Moonlight) won the Oscar last night for best motion picture (for an especially nasty rendition, see this) - even though Price Waterhouse (I know, it's PriceWaterhouseCoopers, but that doesn't have the pizzazz of the original name) has indicated that it was to blame for giving the wrong envelope to Beatty (details here and here).   But if you look at what actually happened on that stage last night, you see that Beatty was not the cause of the error.  Indeed, he realized something was wrong, and struggled under the spotlight to correct it.  And though he couldn't quite manage to do that, I think he deserves credit for trying.

Here's a video of the televised event with a second-by-second timeline:




.06-14 seconds: Beatty looks in the envelop, and realizes something is wrong (he later explains, and Price Waterhouse acknowledges, that what's in the envelope is the card announcing Emma Stone winning best actress for La La Land).  He's likely looking to see if there's another announcement card - one for the best motion picture.

.14-16 seconds: Beatty turns to Faye Dunaway, hoping she might have some idea about what's going on, but she just gives him a reproachful look, thinking he's horsing around at the wrong time.

.17 seconds:  Feeling the pressure, Beatty begins to announce, "And the Academy Award..."  But he can't bring himself to finish, because he knows something is not right.

.20 seconds:  Beatty looks down again at the card, thinking maybe he missed something.

.21-.25 seconds: Beatty says "for best picture..."  He looks past Dunaway, desperately hoping, again, for some guidance from someone off-stage.  Dunaway, still thinking he's joking, says "You're impossible."

.26-29 seconds: Beatty, unable to continue, because he knows something is wrong, gives the envelope to Dunaway, who barely glances at the errant card, and announces "La La Land"

So ... we still need to find out how exactly Price Waterhouse - or the people or person at Price Waterhouse - came to give Beatty the wrong envelope (Russian hacking, maybe? - I'm only joking) (mostly) (he did direct, co-write, and star in Reds).  But, Warren Beatty can hold his head up, if not high, at least not too low, as someone who struggled with tens of millions of people watching him, to do the right thing, under incredible pressure.

Once upon a time, prior to the digital age, a mistake made on television and wrongly attributed left the non-culprit with little recourse, totally at the mercy of the "professional" critics who sounded off today.  But also today, videos on YouTube show the truth.  Beatty wasn't a villain last night - to the contrary, he was almost a hero.