It was the slap heard around the world. Following the March 27 show, Will Smith’s slap has completely taken over the popular news cycle. Celebrities from Jim Carrey to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar came out to condemn the slap and the producer of the whole ceremony, Will Packer, went on a mini media tour to express his disagreement with the action. But deep down, a cynic could argue this event is exactly what the Academy wanted. Maybe not a slap per se, but something that would get people talking — not about how out of touch the awards have become, but just some good old-fashioned drama. Because ultimately, one of the dire consequences of this slap was that its media frenzy let the rest of this year’s Academy Awards — an Academy Awards that spat in the face of everything that is great about film — completely off the hook. Much like the overblown discourse that came from the slap, the show did not adequately respect the movies or the talented people that had a part in making them; it cared only about the number of eyes that would view them.
After a performance by Beyoncé to open the show, the three hosts, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall, came out on stage following an introduction by DJ Khaled. The fact that the Academy deemed DJ Khaled as the appropriate opening note to this ceremony should tell you just about everything you need to know about the trajectory of the show — it’s all about out-of-touch pop-culture over the art of film. The opening monologue was your standard cringe-inducing non-humor that seems to have become the Oscars brand over the past decade or so. The poorly written traditional jokes about how every movie nominated this year was boring and how no one watched them were back in full force. As per usual, they did not land.
The Academy made two attempts to attract more viewers by including the fan-voted categories, “Most Cheer-Worthy Moment” and “Favorite Movie of 2021.” The…