The Oscars’ (Misleading, Dumb, and Revealing) 2012 Ad Campaign

We showed you how to kiss...and be dragged upstairs for some domestic rape!

This year’s Oscars ad campaign, “Celebrate the Movies in All of Us,” was devised by Academy Award co-producers, Brian Grazer and Don Mischer, and Tom Sherak, the reigning president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The 84 black-and-white ads (yes, 84!) are currently plastered all over digital billboards in Los Angeles and Times Square as well as on YouTube and Oscar.com to remind audiences, per Grazer, that with the popularity of video-on-demand, satellite and cable TV, etc., they shouldn’t forget “the communal experience of shared laughter and emotion that people experience in a theater.”

Sure, that’s fine. I agree with Mr. Grazer here since I much prefer screening films in a darkened theater (with stadium seating) than on my six-year-old couch at home. But as I tweeted last week, something about this campaign bugs me: namely, it’s not the Oscars that showed us how to do these things; it’s the filmmakers, cinematographers, screenwriters, costume and set designers, actors, sound technicians, etc., many of whom (at one time at least) functioned quite independently from The Academy. Moreover, as some of my colleagues have pointed out on various social media, some of the ads’ captions are just downright idiotic. Perhaps the worst offender is this one on Star Wars:

We showed you how to be a family...by cutting off our son's arm!

Now before you get all Oh, no, she didn’t on me, I’m fully aware that motion pictures and the Academy Awards are not mutually exclusive and, moreover, that the latter depends on the former for its existence. But it doesn’t necessarily work the other way around as the ad campaign implies. Take the spot below with Gene Kelly: “We showed you how to sing…” Well, no you didn’t. Since the Academy is an “honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures,” it did not show us how to sing. Yes, Academy, some of your now-6,000 members demonstrated how to sing in the rain, kiss sexily, and (ugh) love their families, but many of them did this before they associated with your ass. You see, membership in the AMPAS is by invitation or the result of an Oscar nomination. And in some cases, one can have a friend write a letter on one’s behalf: “Mr. Sherak, in case you missed it, Channing Tatum was totally awesome in The Vow (2012). Please reserve him a place in our fine organization. Cordially, Martin Scorsese.”

Oscars, you did no such thing.

Before I get worked up even more, let me give you a quick history of the Academy Awards, so you can see where I’m coming from… (Or if you don’t wanna read the next couple of paragraphs, see this Animatic Press cartoon, which effectively sums up what I’m recounting.)

AMPAS/Oscars 101

In the late 1920s, MGM bigwig Louis B. Mayer got all antsy when studio construction unions began forming in Hollywood. You see, with these guilds came expensive labor agreements, which were proving cost-prohibitive for the film studio. In short, dude wasn’t making a profit because he was shucking out all his money to unions. Also, dude was evidently pissed off because he wanted MGM set designers to build his Santa Monica beach house [pic] and now, because of such contracts, his “outside project” would be tres expensive. As a result, Mayer and a couple of buddies created the AMPAS. In effect, this organization would hopefully stave off any more unionization efforts in Hollywood. Shortly after this meeting, Mayer convened with thirty-six actors, directors, writers, technicians, and producers in a fancy-pants hotel and told them that if they signed on as “Academy members,” working conditions would improve and they’d be a part of an elite organization. Not wanting to miss out on such an opportunity, the Hollywood folks — including new president Douglas Fairbanks and the only female, Mary Pickford — signed on.

We showed you how to recycle Pocahontas!

The doling out of Awards, which we now celebrate with gusto, were actually an afterthought of this newly organized union. Again, while many industry folk committed to the AMPAS, they were seeing few events planned to legitimize them or showcase Hollywood’s talent. Enter the first awards ceremony in 1929, honoring films released from August 1, 1927 through July 31, 1928. In the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 250 well-dressed people dined on fish and chicken while Douglas Fairbanks made a speech and divvied out golden statues to his colleagues. The event was apparently a rather quiet one, virtually free of the media.

So we know that a nervous/pissed Louis B. Mayer initially created the AMPAS to curb union formations in Hollywood and to exert more control over his chattel, I mean, employees. But what about the awards ceremony? Was it established for an underhanded purpose as well? No, surely not in Hollywoodland! Well, yeah, it was. In Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer, Scott Eyman quotes a rather smug-sounding Mayer on the Oscars:

I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them. [...] If I got them cups and awards they’d kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That’s why the Academy Award was created.

Ah, Hollywood, you never fail me with your stories.

Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Oscar!

The Problem(s) with This Campaign

Speaking of stories, let’s get back to the Academy’s 2012 ad campaign and all those narratives it has supposedly conveyed to us over the years. Again, what bothers me here are not so much the (dumb) captions but that the organization claims and promotes these works/performances as its own, as if it had a legitimate hand in making The Shining or Avatar or Do the Right Thing. This discrepancy should be especially obvious in the case of Spike Lee, who although he just tweeted otherwise (yes, HE TWEETED ME) surely can’t be too impressed with the poster below that claims not he but the Oscars “showed audiences how to make a change.”

It’s no secret that Lee, an Academy member, occasionally throws harsh words at mainstream Hollywood and the AMPAS. For example, in 1998 he called out the Academy for its lack of black nominations and failure to recruit more diverse members. In 2004, he admitted to voting for the annual awards “with a grain of salt,” further explaining that it can be downright “paralyzing” to give “an organization power to validate your work of art.” To him, both Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing were “bigger than the awards.” Finally, even as recently as 2011, Lee took on the Academy again, claiming they just do not matter:

In 1989, Do the Right Thing was not even nominated. What film won best picture in 1989? Driving Miss Mother F*cking Daisy! That’s why [Oscars] don’t matter. Because 20 years later, who’s watching Driving Miss Daisy? [...] There are many times in history where the best work does not get awarded. And I’m not even talking about my own work. So that’s why [the Oscars] don’t matter.

So when I see the shot below of Mookie in his Dodgers jersey or above of Gene Kelly on a lamppost positioned alongside such silly captions and that gold Oscar statuette, I can only shake my head because I see that this campaign — accurately labeled as “desperate, embarrassingly self-aggrandizing, rushed, and uninspired” by some perceptive readers over at Slash Film — is merely echoing reasons the AMPAS and the Academy Awards were formed in the first place: fear and frugality, but moreover, an attempt to maintain relevancy and control.

Do the right thing, Academy, do the right thing. Fix these stupid ads.

NOTE: My beef here is not with the AMPAS or the Oscars as a whole. After all, the organization’s devotion to research and film preservation as well as its outreach is outstanding and arguably unparalleled. This ad campaign, on the other hand, not so much. And, yes, I will be watching (as well as live-tweeting) the 2012 Oscars as I’ve done since I was about 10 years old. Join me and a bunch of other snarky academics/film-fans at @kellimarshall if you want.

Finally, Overthinking It offers its take on this Oscar campaign. Here’s a taste…

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