This year at the Oscars, the most controversial honour bestowed by the Academy was probably that of host to Seth MacFarlane. This was widely viewed as an attempt to court younger cinephiles by hiring the man behind the evil talking gayby and pot-smoking teddy bear. While his performance garnered scores of criticism, the ploy was a success as the Oscars enjoyed an 11% boost of viewership from people aged 18-49. As someone not a part of that bump, I recently watched the show to see exactly how offensive MacFarlane really was.
A number of Seth’s one-liners visibly ruffled attendees’ dresses’ feathers. When he described Django Unchained as a date-movie for Chris Brown and Rihanna (for those unaware, the former beat the latter, but was forgiven and taken back) it made the audience palpably uncomfortable. I would like to defend the move, as anyone who has seen the pictures of Rihanna post-abuse would understand that discomfort is best directed at the community of our famous superiors for embracing Brown with open arms after his actions, and even perhaps Rihanna for setting a sterling example for her young fans that bloody bruises are just his special way of saying he loves you.
Another joke which did not go over well was describing nine-year old best-actress nominee Quvenzhané Wallis as being sixteen years away from being too old for George Clooney. Many have claimed that this constituted sexualisation and was especially heinous given that she was being directly addressed in the audience that night. If Wallis perceived being “too old for Clooney” as meaning “too old to have sex with”, and not “too old to date”, then there was no innocence being robbed, only a reminder that it’s a bit of a double-standard that old men are socially permitted to date women significantly younger than them.
Mel Gibson’s voicemails were claimed to be the inspiration for Django’s screenplay, referencing his infamous strings of drunken, anti-Semitic ramblings. When his joke garnered boos it was MacFarlane’s retort of “Oh, so you guys are on his side” which was really poignant. To act as though his slurs are defensible is itself shameful and mockery is hardly off-limits (though the choice of venue was, admittedly, debatable).
Yet another major source of ire was Seth’s musical number “We Saw Your Boobs”. Many saw this as an attack of misogyny by the patriarchal hegemony. I would like to think that, contrary to being anti-woman, the song was very pro-woman in a satirical condemnation of Hollywood’s own apparent need to get every leading lady to let out a little T&A while the only real male ass-action is coming from James Franco and Tommy Wiseau. The problem is further exacerbated by the obsession that consumers have with female stars’ physical appearances. For example, it is appalling that Wes Anderson’s brilliant short-film Hotel Chevalier is arguably best known as the movie in which Natalie Portman gets naked. Since when was acting ability so strongly correlated with hip-to-waist ratio? But again, I would like to think that this was the motivation behind the move, but it’s hard for me to give that credit to the ham-hand responsible for taking the humour out of “reference humour”. But even if MacFarlane was not trying to make social commentary, it is hypocritical to criticize him for being direct about one of the film industry and audience’s greatest anachronisms.
One of the jobs of a satirist is to tell the emperor that he has no clothes, but an important caveat is that he does so in a manner that is funny. And that is why I, personally, am offended by MacFarlane’s performance. Just as with his most famous work, Family Guy, MacFarlane can often have good points, fun references, and valid critique, but his delivery is so clumsy and obtuse that it is just embarrassing to watch. Brown, Clooney, Gibson (which isn’t even topical anymore), and boobs are not even low-hanging fruit: they’ve fallen to the ground and are fermenting, producing entertainment drunk on populism. The material that MacFarlane brought to the table for one of the most watched television events included jokes so bad and so unoriginal that his introduction-joke for Meryl Streep was one I heard used at my sister’s wedding. For an award-show performance that doesn’t feel like a poor man’s Ricky Gervais, I would recommend checking out Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at this year’s Golden Globes, or Andy Samberg at the Independent Spirit Awards. Unfortunately, the Oscars just reminded us that it seems today that all you see is uninspired writing taking over TV.
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