Academy Awards & Diversity: Oscar Ceremony Shrinks to Size of Twitter Hissy Fit

The Oscar ceremony used to command high ground in American culture. This year it proved beyond doubt that it has become a hostage to Twitter. It shrank itself to the size of one of those meaningless 36-hour virtual hissy fits that exists solely in the campus-like enclosed environment that is Twitter. In so doing, Oscar ushered himself further toward the point of total irrelevance.

Every year when the Oscar nominations come out, angry people on Twitter get a bit angrier than usual because this or that sub-group didn’t meet this or that benchmark in this or that category. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the near-century of Oscar tradition it represents is now, in cultural terms, a wholly owned subsidiary of Twitter Inc. (né 2006). Twitter got Kevin Hart fired as Oscar host a couple of years ago, and when other comics’ names were suggested as replacements, Twitter pointed out that all of them had (like Hart) made rude jokes at the expense of this or that protected class. So the Oscar ceremony went without a host last year, and this.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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The Oscar ceremony used to command high ground in American culture. This year it proved beyond doubt that it has become a hostage to Twitter. It shrank itself to the size of one of those meaningless 36-hour virtual hissy fits that exists solely in the campus-like enclosed environment that is Twitter. In so doing, Oscar ushered himself further toward the point of total irrelevance.

Every year when the Oscar nominations come out, angry people on Twitter get a bit angrier than usual because this or that sub-group didn’t meet this or that benchmark in this or that category. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the near-century of Oscar tradition it represents is now, in cultural terms, a wholly owned subsidiary of Twitter Inc. (né 2006). Twitter got Kevin Hart fired as Oscar host a couple of years ago, and when other comics’ names were suggested as replacements, Twitter pointed out that all of them had (like Hart) made rude jokes at the expense of this or that protected class. So the Oscar ceremony went without a host last year, and this.