For the first time in thirty years, the Oscars will not have a host. This follows the backlash over old tweets from comedian Kevin Hart that were deemed offensive and homophobic.
The tweet that resurfaced including ones were Hart wrote, “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughters doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head & say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay,’” and “Lmao @ all of the woman asking me where the pic is, I’m not passing along a pic of a naked man!!! That would make me gay by association.”
Hart refused to apologize, but on his radio show, “Straight from The Hart,” he later apologized saying that he stands with the LGBT community and that the fight will always be for equality.
The absence of an Oscars host raises a lot of questions in concern to how we react to controversy as a society. The huge issue in our current society is that people have forgotten how to forgive.
People have made mistakes and if you keep hounding them about it when they’ve apologized and have made efforts to be a better person, it creates an extremely toxic environment that does not allow room for growth.
When the Oscars went on without a host in 1989 and actors and viewers did not enjoy the program. The majority of people viewed the show as being a disaster. There was nothing spectacular to talk about, except the spectacular disaster of one of the performances, and this is the prime example people used as an example of how this year’s Oscars will go down.
In a featured skit, the character of Snow White, played by Eileen Bowman, comes back to Hollywood after her peak in the 1930’s. She is shown a good time at a version of the pre-Prohibition Coconut Grove Club and Merv Griffin sings a variation of his song, “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.” Old-time Hollywood celebrity couples are introduced such as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and Vincent Price and Coral Browne. Snow White is eventually introduced to her blind date, Rob Lowe, and they both sing and dance through a tribute to Hollywood, singing “Rollin’, rollin’, keep the cameras rollin.’” Critics described it as being awkwardly scripted and severely unusual.
When the skit was finally over, Lily Tomlin came out on stage and joked that “more than a billion and a half people just watched that, and at this very moment they’re trying to make sense of it.” This is probably why the Academy made sure to have an Oscars host every year.
People have expressed their thoughts and opinions, saying that the Academy should have simply hired another host. However, another issue comes into play, of whether potential hosts in the future will be up to par with previous hosts, such as Ellen DeGeneres.
[insert year] TV-video production major Marie Menhart said, “I think it would be better to have a host because that’s one of the things that makes the experience fun and humanizing. I think the perception of what it means to be someone who hosts the Oscars has been greatly affected by this fiasco, so it might pose more of a challenge in the future to find someone impressive to take on the job.”We will have to wait and see how this year’s Oscars plays out, but due to recent conversations and predictions, the disconnect between the absence of a host and its viewers will anticipate a negative effect on its ratings, as well as the overall outcome of the show.
