Last week there were two events that I used to pay attention to that this year I ended up ignoring entirely: The Oscars and the NFL Draft. The NFL draft I ignored because of the league’s “getting woke” (though the fact the Texans have been sucking hard makes the decision much easier). The Oscars I have ignored for similar wokeness reasons, plus general disinterest, for a long time, even before the weirdness of 2020.
It seems that I’m not alone, since Oscar ratings were a disaster:
Everyone knew this was coming, given how pathetic the ratings were for the Golden Globes and the Grammys, but even so, the viewership numbers are a shocking disaster for the Academy Awards broadcast. After last year’s rock-bottom viewership hit 23.6 million and the top award went to a Korean film, Parasite, the average person hadn’t even heard of, this year’s Oscars went full woke. You never go full woke . . .
Ratings crashed 58 percent off last year’s abysmal viewership, down to 9.85 million Americans. Let that sink in: In a nation of 330 million, not even ten million Americans watched the Oscars. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ strategy of embracing diversity as a supposed means to bring in younger viewers has proven a complete failure: Ratings were down even more for young adults. In the 18–49 demographic, ratings crashed 64 percent. The star power is gone. The glamour is gone. The public interest is gone.
The Oscars always had problems but in the last decade they’ve become turgid, sanctimonious, predictable, joyless, and boring, not to mention bitter and negative about the country that has created so much splendor and wealth for the lucky few who get to appear onstage at the ceremony. Every year, its top honor goes to a cinematic op-ed destined in most cases to be quickly forgotten rather than an enduring and meaningful piece of entertainment.
The Academy needs to completely rethink the direction it is going in if it wants to salvage any viewership or cultural relevance whatsoever. Like many other institutions, it has mistaken Twitter mobs for the voice of the people and allowed itself to be guided by the former at the expense of heeding the latter.
“Turgid, sanctimonious, predictable, joyless, and boring.” There’s ad headline to put in Variety!
Here’s the video from The Critical Drinker that makes the same points with a bit more pungency, while also noting that many of those working in Hollywood are are absolutely horrible people who have no business lecturing the rest of the country about anything, with a side order of Sullivan’s Travels:
“Unwelcome political diarrhea” sums it up nicely…
(Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Tags: Democrats, Hollywood, Social Justice Warriors, video
The thought occurred to me … the ratings & viewership we see for the Oscars, is that US only?
What if that’s true, and their viewership outside the US is on the rise for the same reasons? Just guessing, I could be wrong, but I wonder.
“In the 18–49 demographic, ratings crashed 64 percent. The star power is gone. The glamour is gone. The public interest is gone.”
because it’s all hostile and deliberate fraud. and everyone knows it. the young especially, because they have no memory of what was and thus, rather than imposing their memory on what transpires now, see the present farce for what it is.
“they’ve become turgid, sanctimonious, predictable, joyless, and boring”
just like the ones who own all of it, who celebrate the loss of stars, the lost of glamour, and the loss of interest. yes, they celebrate it, because that was their intent. now ask yourself – who are they?
The biggest mistake the Oscars made, IMHO, was expanding the number of candidates for Best Picture. The mainstream movies split the vote among them, allowing a small but committed group of voters to pick the wokest movie for the trophy. Which means that the Best Picture honor has become meaningless. Was “Nomadland” *really* the best movie made in the English language in 2020? Color me skeptical. And does it *really* bear comparison with winners from other years – with “Casablanca”, say, or “The Best Years of Our Lives”, or “Schindler’s List”, or “Rocky”, or “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, or “The French Connection”, or “Ben-Hur”, or “The Lord of the Rings” – movies that people talked about, movies that people *cared* about? OK, I haven’t seen “Nomadland”, but I doubt it.
Which bring me to the biggest reason why people didn’t watch the Oscars: They didn’t see any of the movies being touted. The number of movie tickets sold crashed last year – a side effect of the “Rona” lockdowns, though it’s been declining for years – and I’ll be surprised if those numbers rebound to anything like what they were BC (Before Covid). IMHO, Hollywood is collateral damage in the Left’s Rona-based campaign against the US economy, and I’m LMAO!
It’s my opinion that all such shows should be regarded as important only as rallying points for who to boycott. Following upon the Academy Awards or the World Series boycott their advertisers for two months if they were part of the group that signed the anti-Georgia election law manifesto. We know that everyone who buys from these companies has to show ID (or have its equivalent, a credit card.) And if they cheat on the purchase and use another person’s card, the purchase is repossessed. Free and fair elections are just as important as selling Coke. But there’s only one thing that will make them realize this – a targeted boycott as a sort of fine, rendering their most expensive promotions useless or worse.
“What if that’s true, and their viewership outside the US is on the rise for the same reasons? Just guessing, I could be wrong, but I wonder.”
I used to pay a lot of attention to movies, particularly the business end of it. (I still like movies, but have only seen one new Hollywood release in the last 10 years–Ford v. Ferrari.) For the last 15 years, Hollywood has done better internationally than domestically with an established formula: (1) lots of action; (2) limited dialog; and (3) America bashing.
Trans and female heroes and “woke” story lines (e.g. global warming) are just about 180 degrees from that formula. They might have action and noise, but they are talky, boring, and downright offensive to foreign audiences. So my guess is that this SJW dreck plays as bad or worse internationally than it does domestically. If the studios still think the international box office will keep them afloat, they have another think coming.
turgid , sanctimonius , predictable, joyless and boring. yes. and these are its good points
I find the Critical Drinker far more entertaining than the vast majority of movies produced by Hollywood in recent years.
The Critical Drinker is absolutely hilarious. “Some films are so Sh*t, they leave a skid mark on your psyche” (may not be completely verbatum)
“Free and fair elections are just as important as selling Coke”
for them, “free and fair” means “us”. so for them, fraud in their favor is perfectly free and fair, and anyone voting to override them is not free and fair.
“boycott”
irrelevant. these are no longer customer funded businesses, these are now subsidized operations.
“Here’s the video from The Critical Drinker that makes the same points with a bit more pungency, while also noting that many of those working in Hollywood are are absolutely horrible people who have no business lecturing the rest of the country about anything…”
I have to beg to differ in one small way. It is true the squeaky left-wing wheels in Hollywood get all the grease. That said, having optioned a screenplay some years ago, and having attended two Indie galas at the WGA Theater in Los Angeles, it is my belief that most people working in Hollywood are hard-working, industrious and focused on The Dream.
I was terrified when I went out there, figuring my screenwriting career would end before it even began once my politics were known. No one talked politics at all. It was all show biz and what projects people were involved with. That said, I have already moved to prose. I would not want to work in Woke Hollywood today. The way things are there now, I’d rather have a nice hot cup of hemlock tea.
Everything is downstream from globalism and mass immigration. The domestic market is a culture that has basically disintegrated, and the foreign market is increasingly important to their financial calculations. Appeals to everybody ends up being appeals to nobody. Everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator – childish superhero adventures, for example. They still want to pretend they’re producing relevant “art”, though, so they nominate obscure films that at least feign seriousness. They’re not politically neutral so most of those “serious” films tend to be woke tractor art, mostly white-hating racism, the only thing this fractured culture agrees upon, both left and right. Tedious and not very entertaining, even to the most bigoted of film goers. The selection of the Anthony Hopkins picture from a field of PC screeds illustrates Hollywood’s only-just-beginning dilemma. Kowtowing to Chinese censorship is another facet of the same dilemma.