Once upon a time, the Oscars were one of the most-watched shows on television, with over 40 million people tuning in. It was only rivaled by the Golden Globes and the Super Bowl.
For the last decade, it has seen a huge decline in both viewership and relevance. There are many possible reasons for that. How long the show is, the huge amounts of commercials (16 to 20 per hour), and even an extremely polarized audience. Either that is tired of Hollywood preaching at them or that hasn't seen enough change for the Academy's many century-long failures: too white, too US-centric, too male, and for awarding men with dubious pasts.
The 2022 Oscars weren't only a disaster because of the infamous slap. When they removed "less relevant" awards to make it shorter, it made it appear that everyone behind the screen wasn't worth mentioning. And still, the ceremony was longer than usual. They aimed for younger audiences - who apparently "don't want to watch anything longer than 60 seconds” - and added a sufferable Spiderman sketch and Twitter polls for “Oscars Fan Favorite” and “Oscars Cheer Moment.”
The thing is, the Oscars have always been boring. The jokes are stiff and the presenters are clearly reading from a prompt. Unable to seem to relax at all. It is long. Three hours + the red carpet. But that never seemed to be a problem before.
The issue is that it wants to maintain its status quo, even though the world has dramatically changed. The producers want to continue doing the same show with the same exact model and still expect the same relevance.
While everyone else is asking: Are we celebrating all cinema or just the ones produced by the US? Do they want more diversity or are they only pretending to do so? Why does this need to have a huge audience anyway? Is it worth spending three hours watching this?
The number one award for world cinema?
It's Hollywood and it's a big deal. However, the Oscars need to decide if they are the main movie award of the world or just an award for movies made in the US (with occasional UK movies on it).
Netflix (and other streaming platforms at smaller rates) has shown everyone that there are talented actors, producers, and ideas all over the world and that the public has an appetite for them. There have always been excuses for the lack of international movies in the regular categories, namely that not enough people were interested in watching foreign movies.
The public was always there. After all, there are far more humans outside the US than in it. What seems to have really changed is that some Netflix shows such as Round Six (Squid Games) and Money Heist (La casa de Papel) proved that the public in the US would watch something made in another country in another language. It made clear that everyone is OK with watching stuff with subtitles. A fact that shocked no one but the TV and movie industry.
Still, foreign movies are categorized separately. Occasionally, an international movie runs in the Best Picture category, as Parasite did in 2020, Drive my Car in 2022, and this year, Nothing New on the Western Front - a German anti-war film. But in order to be nominated in the Best Picture category, international films need to be exceptional. This frankly, is not the case with some of the movies made in Hollywood that have been nominated (and won) Oscars before.
To make things even more complicated, to be in the international movie category it needs to be chosen by its country. As a result, movies that are more interesting but don't show a flattering image of the country or the current government don't stand a chance. Additionally, they need a great deal of investment to be able to reach the critics and the academy. Not an easy feat for those creating movies in developing countries.
If the Oscars want more audience and attention, maybe aiming for audiences in other countries and not younger ones would be a better bet. That would also give them more credibility while ensuring their importance. Only if the whole world is taken into account fairly can it be the biggest and most prestigious movie award.
Should they expect a huge viewership throughout the show, anyway?
We are not in the 1980s or ‘90s anymore. There are endless options for what to watch at the tip of our hands. There are thousands of things fighting for our attention. We have social media to scroll through and video games to play. Why spend 3 hours watching a boring ceremony?
The Academy needs to understand that they cannot expect viewers to tune in and stay watching for that long. And consequently, they can't rely on as many paid ads for the live Ceremony on ABC as they used to. That's just how it is.
It doesn't mean the event has lost its prestige or its importance. That just means people will prefer to watch it online, or for a short while. Or even just view snippets of what happened the next day. That's how most of the world has always done it anyway, because of different time zones. I have never met a European that has ever watched an Oscars ceremony. How can they? It starts at 1 AM on a Sunday.
In Brazil, I also used to watch the first hour or so but rarely stayed until the end. It was just too late. But that didn't mean I and others wouldn't check the winners the next day. We might hit the cinemas to watch a few of them, rent them out in the following weeks, or talk about the results on social media or with friends. It still had an impact.
Will a younger viewership save audience numbers?
There are some critics that say that the problem with the Oscars is the movies themselves. They believe that the movies listed are sometimes too inaccessible. And that fan favorites such as The Avengers should be in there somehow to bring a younger audience to watch the show.
That's quite stupid, for a few reasons:
First, there were always movies that did well at the box office but weren't Oscar material, and that didn't affect viewership before. It's also worth mentioning that there were movies that did well on both counts, having huge audiences and winning awards, such as The Lord of the Rings or Titanic.
Second, I don't believe zoomers will sit for 3 hours just to watch Tom Holland get an Oscar, anyway.
Third, the Oscars are supposed to be about quality movies. Theoretically, it should represent the pinnacle of cinema. There are other awards such as the People's Choice Awards for the public to choose their favorites.
Finally, I do think young people do care about the Oscars, but they just consume it differently. They watch smaller parts of it on social media, where they also check what their favorite actors are wearing. They follow through streamings that are not counted for the final audience or turn to YouTube and podcasts for summaries later. They watch the movies that win and are recommended and talked about. So the prestige is still there, it just cannot be measured by how many TV sets are turned on to ABC in the US anymore.
A way forward
The Academy should understand what the public wants from them. Why has anyone ever watched or cared about the Oscars?
First and foremost, it serves as a seal of approval and quality. But the only way to find this quality is to search as broadly as possible. They should consider a wide range of films from diverse storytellers and directors. It seems to anyone following the Oscars that they do not understand that the world has changed, and that representation is an asset rather than an issue.
Secondly, glamour. The Oscars have always been about famous actors and directors and being able to peek into their glamorous lives. It should be more about that, maybe in a dinner-style format as it has been in the past and how it is at the Golden Globes. Let people feel more comfortable and have some fun with it.
In a single sentence, let's accept what the Oscars are: an award and a party for mostly the rich and famous people working in the film industry in the US. It's an industry award. No one gets extra excited about an award for marketing or architecture, so why is the movie industry superior and noteworthy? In the end, as with most other awards, it doesn't matter that much what happens there, only the results.
It doesn't matter if it's long or whether or not many people watch it on TV. What matters is if it's a reliable award that truly nominates and awards the finest movies in the world. They should really, really search, to find and be fair to everyone who creates this kind of art. That is the only way they can keep their importance.
Or maybe as this article from the New York Times put it, we aren’t just watching the decline of the Oscars. We’re watching the end of the movies. But that's a discussion for another post.
The Oscars will take place on Sunday, March 12, 2023.
All quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
The 1930 movie based on the book, launched just a year prior (1929) won the Oscars for Outstanding Production and Best Director. The book is regarded as almost a compulsory read for Germans having an anti-war account of the first world war. It was even banished during the Nazi period. It follows young boys in the harrowing trenches of WWI.
All quiet on the Western Front (2022)
I enjoyed this movie. I think it is a movie worth watching and recommending, despite some critics' complaints that it is too bloody and diverges from the book. It is a truly anti-war film and that's what made it feel so refreshing to me. Especially since it is being told by the losing side, the Germans. I have only watched war movies made by Hollywood and all of them seem to glorify war, at least to some extent. All quiet on the Western Front is gruesome, but so is war. And that's why we should be against any war fought anywhere.
This was on my list last week of upcoming TV shows. It is an Italian show based on the book of the same name by Italian writer Elena Ferrante. A good opportunity to watch something from another country. Interestingly enough, Giordana Marengo, who plays Giovanna, is a brand-new actress with no previous acting experience. She just auditioned for the part and got it. If you watch the show and see how much she needs to express emotions that were otherwise narrated in the book, you could never tell.
Great article, thanks for putting this together. I love the Oscars and enjoy putting a ballot together with friends for a friendly competition. Every year I hope the producers will capture some of the magic of previous shows that I felt understood the assignment of “show love of cinema.” That’s all the ceremony needs to do. Just love the movies.
One reason why Hollywood remains central to world moviemaking is because so many films are financed there. That’s due to the relative ease of raising investment capital in the U.S. and the sheer quantity of capital available. That’s also the reason why so many high-tech startups are founded in the U.S. by people from other countries rather than in their home countries: access to capital.
I see the Oscars as mostly about your second point, glamour, and shrug. It’s part of the paradox of Hollywood: a combination of lifestyle unseriousness and the possibility of huge amounts of money to be made via the movie art-form. Maybe that’s partly a California thing: Silicon Valley presents a similar paradox in its combination of laid-back, dressed-down casualness and fierce competition between high-tech firms (surfing might be a good metaphor).
Hollywood has always been an international place and not just because that’s where the world’s talent went. In the 1930s, Hollywood employed many European film people, quite a few of them refugees, including Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Bertolt Brecht, Billy Wilder and Marlene Dietrich.
Perhaps like you, I appreciate the Netflix model and not just because they seem serious about scouring the world looking for things their viewers might like once they’ve sampled them. I particularly like the serialized shows they acquire and, along with their competitors, are now producing. In the last few years, the streamers have brought me things that might never have fit into either conventional films or TV, including Coffee Prince, Tientsin Mystic, The Beatles: Get Back, Andor and especially Maniac:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6cDDmk-O5A