Well, that's a wrap. After months of lobbying and hoopla, the little gold guys have found their new homes on mantels and office shelves, and my self-referential stint as the Carpetbagger is drawing to a close for the season. But all is not well in trophyland. Given the general feeling of malaise that has settled over many pundits post-Oscars (everyone who's not going on an immediate vacation, that is), it seems that we're all looking for ways to fix the show, or awards season as a whole. After the ratings showed viewership essentially flat among the target 18-to-49 demographic, and critics drubbed Billy Crystal's performance as host on Sunday, it's clear there is a disconnect between the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and audiences. My colleagues Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply offered some reasons for that this week, including nominations for films that most Americans haven't seen (the ferociously successful Oscar campaigns by the tiny but effective Weinstein Company are aimed at the Academy first) and winners picked by older voters with esoteric tastes.
At The Hollywood Reporter, Tim Goodman suggests that the Academy needs not only to go younger — which it's been intermittently trying to do, with mostly negative results — but also get "more original and creative in the show's structure and presentation." His suggestions include ditching the montage in which the host is inserted into the nominated movies ("Dead," he writes. "Move on"); not overexplaining the categories ("A significant number of people know what sound editing is, how makeup can shape a character or how special effects can enhance a movie"); and beefing up the "In Memoriam" section with more clips. "The point is, throw out what's been done for the last 40 or so years," he writes. "Everything, from seating style to the location of the event, should be reconsidered."
In Variety, Christy Grosz examines whether the Oscars could be moved to early February, a change the Academy has long considered but that is made more possible by electronic voting, which begins next year. A shorter season could reduce the time for campaigning — a sore spot anyway for the Academy, which doesn't like to think that awards are affected by lobbying. Advocates of an earlier Oscars "also say it would truncate the season and relieve so-called awards fatigue," Ms. Grosz writes, by making competing shows like the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice "fade away." But that probably won't happen, she adds, since televised award shows are still cash cows for the networks. More likely, campaigning would just begin earlier (to which the Bagger and every other pundit can communally respond: Nooooooooo, please no) and leave voters and, equally important, viewers with less time to catch up with the nominated films. Besides, at the end of February the show is in a television sweet spot: during sweeps and away from the competition of football.
One way to change the Oscars wholesale is, of course, to alter the demographics of the voters, who are far less diverse than moviegoers. (The median Academy voter is a 62-year-old white guy, according to a recent report by The Los Angeles Times.) The Academy's leadership has said repeatedly that it is open to that, though progress seems to be glacial, reflecting the group's self-selecting membership procedures and the makeup of the film industry at large. It continues to experiment with parts of the show like putting the craft categories first this year, an unpopular move but perhaps not enough. If it moved the craft categories to an untelevised ceremony, it's likely that only the most devoted of cinephiles would miss them. The more stringently the ceremony tries to remind viewers about the magic of movies, the less appealing the whole thing seems; the good-medicine approach always backfires in entertainment. The Grammys don't remind people about the power of song — a given — only about the power of talent or image rehabilitation. (See Brown, Chris: singing, dancing felon.)
Certainly the Academy is nervous about moviegoers changing tastes, declining ticket sales and digital piracy, and it shows. But trying to address all that in a single event that is also meant to highlight performance, fashion and celebrity is a stretch. Didacticism and fluff do not marry, except on far-fetched reality shows. And we watch those because they're fun, not because they teach us anything (except how much better we are than their subjects). The Oscars telecast should not graft on a narrative about quality cinema. Leave that to the films themselves. It should be what all TV shows are during sweeps: a glossy land grab for entertainment value, and unapologetic about it.