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Oscar hosting: Is it a thankless task?
With all the social media criticism that comes with it, who wants the
job?
NEW YORK (AP) -- The love-him-or-hate-him reaction to Seth MacFarlane's turn
as Academy Awards host is evidence that one of the most high-profile jobs in
show business is becoming one of its most thankless.
The "Family Guy" creator and first-time Oscars host seemed unusually
preoccupied with his reviews both before and during Sunday's show. He predicted
he'd be ripped apart, and he was, particularly on social media. He also had his
fans, with many suggesting the motion picture academy got precisely the kind of
performance it expected and wanted in hiring someone known for his subversive,
even crude humor.
As is often the case with the Oscars, the major awards themselves -- "Argo"
as Best Picture, Daniel Day Lewis and Jennifer Lawrence as top actors -- hewed
closely to pre-show predictions. The host's performance is the most
unpredictable element of the show, and it seems the negative experiences have
the most mileage. David Letterman's awkward 1995 turn is well-remembered, most
of all by him. Chris Rock tried to bring some edge in 2005 and fell flat. James
Franco and Anne Hathaway's snoozefest in 2011 is still being talked about.
After Franco and Hathaway, the Oscars returned last year to the tried and
true -- eight-time host Billy Crystal -- and faced criticism that the reliable
had become the stodgy.
To some ears, MacFarlane's material -- which included a song-and-dance number
about breast-baring actresses, a domestic violence joke involving Rihanna and
Chris Brown, and references to Mel Gibson's racial slurs -- didn't make the
grade.
"If you're going to the edge, you have to be funny," said comic Joy Behar on
"The View" on Monday. "To me, I love Seth, but it wasn't funny enough."
Behar's colleague, Whoopi Goldberg, a four-time host of the Oscars, had
a bit more empathy, noting that people in MacFarlane's position have a tough
line to walk. The Oscars can't force a younger audience to be interested just by
hiring a younger host, she said, and a younger host has to know the audience
that is out there.
Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Bleier Center for
Television and Popular Culture, agreed that MacFarlane's was a difficult
position.
"Your job description is that you are trying to appeal to people who are not
necessarily watching the Oscars to get them to watch, and at the same time
appeal to people who are actually watching it," he said. "That's not an easy
thing to do."
The Nielsen Co. said an estimated 40.3 million people watched the Academy
Awards on Sunday, up 1 million from last year and the first time since 2010 that
the show topped the 40 million mark. More importantly for ABC, ratings for the
18-to-49-year-old demographic were up 11 percent over 2012. That's the age group
upon which ABC bases its advertising rates, and MacFarlane was brought in this
year in part to attract a younger audience.
The telecast was likely also propelled by the second-screen experience, which
has steadily grown in recent years as a driver of ratings for major live TV
events. Twitter said that there were a total of 8.9 million tweets about the
Academy Awards during the show and red-carpet arrivals. That fell short of both
the Grammys earlier in the month (more than 14 million tweets) and the record
24.1 million tweets about the recent Super Bowl and halftime show.
Arguably MacFarlane's most offensive joke, measured by the audience's groans,
referred to actors who had tried to play Abraham Lincoln over the years. "I
would argue that the actor who really got inside Lincoln's head was John Wilkes
Booth," MacFarlane said of Lincoln's assassin.
In addition, a pre-taped song about movies where famous actresses displayed
their breasts was seen by some women as sexist -- a much-echoed criticism
of MacFarlane's Oscar performance.
"Watching the Oscars last night meant sitting through a series of crudely
sexist antics led by a scrubby, self-satisfied Seth MacFarlane. That would be
tedious enough," wrote the New Yorker's Amy Davidson. "But the evening's
misogyny involved a specific hostility to women in the workplace, which raises
broader questions than whether the Academy can possibly get Tina Fey and Amy
Poehler to host next year. It was unattractive and sour, and started with a
number called 'We Saw Your Boobs.'"
On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League added itself to the list of those
offended by MacFarlane, protesting his joke, through the teddy bear character in
MacFarlane's movie "Ted," about Jewish control over Hollywood. The bear, voiced
by MacFarlane, claimed he was "born Theodore Shapiro and I would like to donate
money to Israel and continue to work in Hollywood forever."
MacFarlane seemed completely aware of what he was doing, and there were no
indications he pulled any surprises. The motion picture academy granted him
complete freedom to write the show as he saw fit but did see MacFarlane's
routines ahead of time. The Academy had no immediate comment when contacted on
Monday about MacFarlane's performance.
Some critics figured MacFarlane was in a can't-win situation. Brought on to
deliver "edge," and perhaps some of the younger movie audience that enjoyed
"Ted," he was little known to a large portion of the Academy Awards audience.
They didn't know his style of humor, either.
"For a guy who had the deck stacked against him before he started, MacFarlane
did a surprisingly impressive job," wrote critic Tim Goodman in The Hollywood
Reporter.
Critic Frazier Moore of The Associated Press said MacFarlane went back and
forth between the Bad Seth and Good Seth throughout the night and gave high
marks to both.
"Both were very funny, stewarding a broadcast that never went askew," Moore
wrote.
Seth MacFarlane is funny as hell. My wife and I laughed all night long. If you were offended by some of his jokes then maybe you need to take life less seriously and get over it. Thumbs up to MacFarlane. Thumbs down to the dorks that can't take a joke for what it is...a joke.
NEXT year, i want a song about all the guys' butts we've "seen"---naming names just like the "boobs song". only this time, lets have a quick video review of said butts!
i thought barbara streisand was wonderful; and william shatner was great too!
I truly didn't have a problem with the host BUT the much fanfared bally hoo about a 50 th Anniversary of James Bond JUST NEVER HAPPENED all the rags were stating All The James Bond men would be there and all we got was Shirley Bassy singing off key and ,,,,well enough,
