I’m almost ashamed to admit that I even watched any of the Academy Awards broadcast this year.  I’ve almost reached my breaking point with Hollywood, so watching yet another installment of the Orgy of Self-Congratulations was definitely not easy to do.  Honestly, the only reasons I tuned in at all were 1) I had it on the DVR so I could fast-forward all the self-righteous speeches by the Hollywood elites who think they have any clue of reality, and 2) I was curious to see how Hugh Jackman–certainly the weirdest choice for a host in decades–would fair.

Sadly, even with the added benefit of the DVR, I still found myself being peppered by social commentary rife with assumed moral superiority by the most socialist, most permissive, least moral people in the world.

Take, for example, the weepy tirade given by Dustin Lance Black, the writer of the gay-fest, Milk.  I won’t even re-print it here because it doesn’t deserve the press, but suffice it to say that he won the hearts of Hollywood with his tearful hopes of one day falling in love and getting married…to a man.  Ugh.

My favorite line of the night though, and most indicative of my point, was from Tilda Swinton during the presentation of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  First, let me preface by saying that the format for the major award presentations this year was a sickening exercise in sychophantism.   With five nominees in each category, the Academy decided to have five previous winners arrive on stage to introduce this year’s nominees.  But it wasn’t just introductions, it was a love-fest of elitist drivel, speaking of the art of acting and the performances by each nominee as if they had done something actually significant.  You would have thought that they had saved Africa (a favorite, though rarely-visited pet preach of the celeb-elites) by the sheer force of their acting.

Anyway, during one such moment, Tilda Swinton was introducing nominee Marisa Tomei, nominated for her role as the stripper love-interest of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Now, brace yourself: you are about to be so deeply moved with elightenment and higher understanding as imparted by Hollywood that you will never consider strippers in the same way again.  Said Swinton, “[your performance] showed us that a stripper needn’t ever take off her dignity with her clothes.”

Is that a choir of angels I hear?  Yes!  I see clearly now!  Strippers are dignified, beautiful creatures who never have drug habits or STD’s!  Poor strippers!  They have been so misunderstood!  All this time I thought they just got paid to remove their clothes; but no.  They are here to teach us about dignity.

So, anyway, on the whole, the show was actually very boring, what little of it I actually watched.  The production as a whole was seriously the worst I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.  In the past, under the skillful control of such great hosts as Billy Crystal and Steve Martin, we would at least be served by a healthy dose of “are we really taking ourselves this seriously?”  But such was not the case this year.  The excuse given was that, in such troubled economic times (and don’t think that’s not a “hate Bush” message thinly veiled), it wasn’t socially conscious to do a big production, so they had to tone it down.  The reality is, Hollywood lost a TON of money this year so they just had to return to the “sell Hollywood” motif, which they certainly tried to do.

As host, Jackman had little face time, with a couple of big musical numbers mixed in, which only revealed that he actually can’t sing that well and, in my opinion, dropped his stock almost as precipitously as the Dow Jones in recent days.

So, to summarize, it’s not like I really expected much different, but this year was exceptionally appalling with its obvious anti-Proposition 8 agenda and willful encouragement of moral degradation.  The end result is that I’m actually, finally pretty much ready to boycott Hollywood for good.  And I mean that literally, I’m ready to leave Hollywood behind, eliminating it entirely from my experience, in exchange for good.  It’s ever more apparent that the two are becoming mutually exclusive.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 10:37 am and is filed under Movie Reviews, MrHattyHat, Rants, TV Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.