Winners and Losers, at the Oscars
I know this observation is a couple of weeks overdue, but I figured I’d go ahead and put this out there. Did you happen to notice that there were some changes in this year’s Academy Awards show on television? For one thing, even though they doubled the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten, it ended at a reasonable time. Yippeee! Most of the program is usually pretty boring. It’s nice when they end on time.
But even more significant, I’d say, is the new way they announced the winners. In year’s past, at least in recent memory, they would open the envelope and say, “The Oscar goes to . . . .” But this year, they said, “The winner is . . . .” This stuff is scripted. Someone told the presenters to say it that way. This isn’t exactly a stop-the-presses moment, but it does strike me as a little bit meaningful considering that Hollywood is the Holy Land of political correctness.
My assumption is that saying, “the Oscar goes to” was supposed to be a gentler way to make the announcement and not hurt the feelings of the people the Oscar did not go to. They wanted to honor all of the nominees and not focus on so-called winners and losers. But let’s be real. It’s an awards ceremony. People vote for their favorites. Some people win and others lose. It’s a good thing to award achievement.
