92nd Academy Awards Recap: Generation Gaps

Last night's Academy Awards may have seen a seismic change, as Parasite was the first film not in English to win Best Picture, after 91 films that were in English (including two silent films that had English title cards). Oscar ninnies will be picking over the results, wondering what this all means--was there that much love for Parasite, or was this a shrug of the shoulders for the other nominees? 1917 was thought to be the safe choice, but with the preferential ballot and a younger, more diverse membership, picking the Best Picture winner has been tough. I'm pretty good at this sort of thing, and I've missed it four of the last five years.

Bong Joon Ho himself took home four statuettes (Picture, Director, Screenplay, and International Feature, although that technically goes to the country, but he gets the trophy). The only other person to do this was Walt Disney for the 1953 awards, but he took them home as studio head; he didn't actually have hands on for the films he won for (they were for Documentaries and Shorts). Bong proved to be a popular, congenial, and humble winner, praising Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino during his speech for Best Director was classy. Interesting to note that it has been ten years in a row now that an American has not won Best Director. The last to do so was Kathryn Bigelow.

The rest of the discussion is about the show itself. In that discussion we can break it down to speeches, musical numbers, and comic bits. The speeches were generally heartfelt, although Joaquin Phoenix seems on the edge of a breakdown and I wonder if it was him or Arthur Fleck giving it. And Joaquin, despite your evocation of the pain of a mother cow, I'm still going to drink milk. And you could have taken a few seconds to thank your director. The other acting nominees were emotional, especially Laura Dern, who brought a tear to my eye when she paid tribute to her parents.

Every year it seems the Oscars don't nominate women or people of color in key categories and then spends the evening wearing a hair shirt about it. Steven Martin and Chris Rock, the de facto hosts, made sport of it, but there was some representation on stage. The doc and short categories always do a good job with that, as Hair Love won Best Animated Short, and American Factory and Learning To Skateboard In A War Zone (When You're A Girl) both were directed or co-directed by women. Hildur Guðnadóttir won Best Score for Joker (the first woman to win a Score award in over twenty years), and Production Design went to two women for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

As for the production itself, I found it to be trying very hard to please everybody. If we look at the musical numbers, there was a full range of generations appealed to. For the Boomers we had Elton John, who won his second Oscar for Best Song (but the first for Bernie Taupin). For Generation X there as a surprise visit by Eminem, who shockingly won an Oscar 17 years ago for "Lose Yourself" (from Eight Mile) but wasn't present. Its hard to figure why they he decided to come now, or who thought to ask him. I know I'm old when his style of rap is now in the golden oldie category.

Janelle Monae opened the show, first as Mister Rogers and then in a weird, somewhat unpleasant recitation of monosyllables that seemed to be improvised. Some called it the worst since the Rob Lowe/Snow debacle of almost thirty years ago. We got the tired spectacle of dancers wearing the costumes of this year's films--there were some Jokers, some World War I soldiers, and mysteriously, some women wearing the festival costumes from Midsommar, which didn't even get nominated. I didn't see any Nazi uniforms, thank god. A young rapper, whose name I didn't catch, also improvised a rhyme on the proceedings halfway through. But I'm left most with the presence of Billie Eilish, who since I watched win several Grammys a few weeks ago I haven't been able to stop thinking about. She was on hand to perform The Beatles "Yesterday" for the In Memoriam segment, but she half-whispered it in the wrong key. That, plus her neon green hair and shapeless clothing, makes her easy pickings for old farts like me, but I still maintain she has great talent. I can only guess that she was tapped for this gig to try to bring in her fans, who are in the Millennial or Generation Z category. But do they even watch the Oscars?

Eilish was also captured in the audience in the image above, uncomprehending the bit by Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig. I'm kind of with Billie--I didn't think it was that funny. And her reaction could be a general statement on the whole show, which didn't seem to have any particular theme. I didn't find much funny all night, aside from a few good gags by Martin and Rock and Olivia Colman's bit about how her win last year made it the best night of her husband's life. Oh, and James Corden and Rebel Wilson having fun over the disaster that was Cats was also funny.

It was the second year in a row without a host, and maybe they need to go back to that. The ratings were the worst ever. The problem is finding a host who appeals to all four quadrants. And I'm reminded that many watch the show via streaming, and I don't know how that's factored into the ratings.

But for now awards season is over. It will start cranking up again soon. Parasite's adventure started with the Palm D'Or in May. It was is only the second film to win both Cannes and the Oscar; Marty was the other back in 1955.