The Movies’ Salute to Television

T he Academy of Motion Picture Sciences is well aware of the problems it faces in getting people to watch the Oscars telecast Sunday night. Last year’s slit-your-throat Oscars honored movies about dying of Alzheimer’s (The Father), a Black Panther slaying (Judas and the Black Messiah), toxic masculinity (Promising Young Woman), and a life of rootless poverty (Nomadland). The relative crowd-pleaser was a no-star movie about Korean immigrants trying and mostly failing to grow vegetables. Click, said America. Ninety-seven percent of us didn’t watch, and for the third time in four years, the ratings hit a new record low: the previously unthinkable sub-basement level of 10.4 million viewers.

The audience doesn’t care about the movies, it doesn’t care about the hosting (shared last year by a number of B-listers, though the ceremony was billed as “hostless”), and it shrugs at the hype.

The Academy, understanding all of this, has made big changes that are bound to fail, although the ratings may enjoy a dead-cat bounce. (The audience could double over last year, and it would still be the second-lowest-rated Oscars on record.) One of these changes is long overdue and will quicken the pace: Eight technical Oscars will no longer be awarded on camera. Sorry, all of you who stan for the sound-effects editors.

Another change is bringing back hosts to guide us through the evening. Good idea, but . . . these hosts should be people Americans actually want to watch. Bring on Kevin Hart and The Rock! Or Dave Chappelle! Or bring back Chris Rock. Hell, even Whoopi Goldberg was pretty good at it. Steve Martin and Billy Crystal were great at it. Jay Leno seems to be available. How about Ricky Gervais?

Instead, the Academy is offering us . . . Amy Schumer? Schumer had one hit movie, seven years ago, and clearly is not catching on as touted during the Obama era. Another co-host, Wanda Sykes, is the former star of a series of sitcoms that failed and these days is probably best known for occasionally popping up on Curb Your Enthusiasm. The third host, Regina Hall (not to be confused with Regina King, who opened last year’s show), is a talented and charming actress who was an essential element of Girls Trip five years ago, but she’s not exactly a household name either. (Tiffany Haddish, the breakout star of that movie, is hilarious, but like Hart, has been vetoed by social media, of whose verdicts the Oscars live in quaking, sweaty fear.)

Just a few years ago, the Oscars featured big stars such as Sandra Bullock in big movies such as Gravity, but the slate of nominees gets increasingly esoteric. And the theatrical distinction has been erased: This year’s top two contenders are TV features that got only a token release in theaters: Apple TV’s CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), a feel-good movie about a girl growing up in a family of deaf people, which won the Producers Guild of America’s top award; and Netflix’s The Power of the Dog, a revisionist Western from New Zealander director Jane Campion that has won dozens of awards, including the Critics Choice honors. The movie’s theme of closeted homosexuality is of such intense and enduring fascination to the Oscars (American Beauty, Moonlight, Milk, Call Me By Your Name, The Imitation Game) that the movie seems like a shoo-in, though it has lost momentum in the awards season lately.

Only two women have ever won the Best Director Oscar, so Campion’s win in that category is a foregone conclusion, which means factors other than merit are playing a big role in the selection, which is exactly why people don’t watch awards shows anymore. If they’re just a reaffirmation of the wisdom of identity politics, who cares? We don’t need a three-hour telecast reminding us that the Academy is committed to honoring diversity. People know corruption when they see it, and the Oscars are corrupted by an eagerness to display inclusivity. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for Sam Elliott to win. That guy will be lucky if he ever works on a studio movie again.

The only point of interest for the audience amid all the drudgery is that an actual beloved movie star — Will Smith for King Richard — might win the Best Actor honors. Smith isn’t the actor Power of the Dog star Benedict Cumberbatch is, but the standard in Hollywood is that beloved box-office stars usually get to win eventually. We’ll see if that tradition continues. I think the winner will be Cumberbatch.

No title that debuted on a streaming service has yet won the Oscar for Best Picture (though Netflix spent a quarter of a billion dollars on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman to try to make it happen, and has spent lavishly promoting many other films over the years). That streak will almost certainly end when either CODA or The Power of the Dog takes the top prize. But although people can watch those titles without leaving their sofas, neither of them has captured the public imagination.

Which is why, to gin up audience excitement, the Academy has devised a new pandering gimmick that is being called the “Twitter Oscar.” Yes, the great unwashed will be invited to cast a vote for their favorite picture — which we already know will be Spider-Man: No Way Home, because we can all read the box-office chart. What’s the point? The audience knows when it’s being patronized.

It’s hard to remember now, but for most of Oscar history the top prize almost always went to one of the biggest hits of the year. This is because the voting ranks were limited to canny old vets who understood the importance of both nouns in show business. Today’s Academy is mainly interested in handing down messages to the public. America is treating these offerings as what they are — ideological spam — and simply refusing to take the call.