It’s time for the Oscars to take another long, hard look at itself for what it recognizes and what it chooses to ignore.
I’m not talking about the awards, I am talking about the most touching moment of the evening, the In Memoriam segment where we remember those lost over the past year.
While they did an admirable job in taking extra time to honour giants of the industry like Rob Reiner, Robert Redford, Catherine O’Hara and Diane Keaton, but other high-profile names were left out of the tribute.
Names like James Van Der Beek, Eric Dane and Malcolm-Jamal Warner were either excluded or forgotten, and that is no small omission to fans of all three (including myself).
The truth of the matter is that the Oscars has always valued contributions in “cinema” over a high-profile presence on the small screen (as we used to call TV).
Consumers of media today, however, don’t care where you made it big, and arguably may not even realize in some cases as they watch all programming on streaming services that feature both side-by-side.
The Oscars has a long history of trying and often failing to adapt to modern times, favouring art films and sometimes intentionally ignoring big-budget productions as somehow “not real cinema” or being unworthy of special recognition.
If the Academy truly wishes to broaden the appeal of the ceremony and the industry as a whole, then they would be well served to at least join those of us to who mourn staples of the “small screen’ that we care about much more than people in a feature where we have to buy tickets to earn the right to appreciate their work.
I’m Paul Martin and that’s what I see looking Beyond the Headlines.
