Virginia Postrel on How to Save the Oscars From Boredom & Annoyance

Virginia Postrel on How to Save the Oscars From Boredom & Annoyance
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former Reason editor Virginia  
Postrel suggests a fix to one of the most-watched, most-frustrating  
annual spectacles in Hollywood:

Hollywood stars still represent what Margaret Thorp, in her 1939 study  
"America at the Movies," called the audience's "escape personalities."  
They invite projection.

On Oscar night, that projection means enjoying the fantasy of  
individual triumph. (The Oscars famously don't recognize ensemble  
casts.) This is the essential glamour of the Oscar ceremony, and it  
explains why people complain so much about the speeches.

The audience wants to revel in the fantasy of being recognized as  
special, but social convention dictates that winners act humble and  
thank everyone else involved. It's fine to thank your mother, your  
husband, your high-school drama teacher—to recognize the kinds of  
relationships everybody has—but thanking your agent, publicist and  
half the cast and crew breaks the spell. Outside Los Angeles,  
audiences don't sit through movie credits.

So the cure for boring Oscar speeches isn't to shorten them—Julia  
Roberts's overtime gushing makes great TV—but to alter their content.  
Tell winners to celebrate their moment and save the industry thank- 
yous for ads in Variety.

Read the full article here.

Postrel recently sat down with Reason.tv's Ted Balaker to talk about  
how glamour operates in showbiz and politics, intellectual property  
rights in fashion, and more. Check it out:







  Reason Magazine - Hit & Run 2/26/11 8:52 AM Nick Gillespie

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