On Sunday evening as most of us this side of the Atlantic slept with little thought to the Oscars, the 85th Academy Awards was taking place. In a theatre full of designer clad, booze laden and Botox filled stars, this year's host Seth MacFarlane performed an opening musical number that has caused uproar and divided opinion. Accompanied by the Gay Man's Chorus of Los Angeles and a troupe of male dancers, for many MacFarlane's song embodied an all male comical onslaught on a list of Hollywood's leading ladies, whom didn't seem to see the funny side(boob). But what did we expect from the Family Guy creator? The song was very much in keeping with his usual canon, designed to laugh in the face of its audience, so was he not just delivering the goods? Perhaps MacFarlane's gag was not an attack based on the actors' sex but rather their pomposity, simply the pretensions of artistic nuances, of being "naked" and "nude". Can Hollywood simply not take a joke?
I personally have no issue with nudity especially in relation to my own body as much of the world knows and has witnessed for itself. Nudity for me is a symptom of feeling comfortable with my body, freedom and almost too frequently a source of comedy. But it is also very much something I must narrate the discourse of. However inflected my agency over my own body is I must retain the feeling that it is mine and noone else's. Perhaps the most problematic thing with "We Saw Your Boobs" is not the joke itself but who is making it. If we strip the joke back to its bare bones, MacFarlane's opening song resembles a cheap attack on women that have strived to achieve in film by those who continue to dominate it. The host immediately set up an uncomfortable dynamic for the ceremony that was described by writer (and Family Guy fan) Margaret Lyons as not, "an awards ceremony so much as a black-tie celebration of the straight white male gaze". Arguably in a ceremony in which 77 percent of Academy voters are male and most females in the industry bypassed, with 30 of this year's honours awarded to men and just 9 to women, equality between the sexes has not come far enough to accommodate this kind of alienating sexist humiliation.
The choice of popular comedian Seth MacFarlane to host this year's ceremony is all part of the Academy's move towards attaining a younger audience and came with obvious risks. This is a gamble that despite the immediate outcry against MacFarlane, has seemingly paid off. The 2013 Oscars were the most watch for 3 years and pulled in an audience of 40.3 million. However is this relative "modernisation" at the cost of women of all ages? Whilst there was a distinct focus on the younger generation this year, it would appear this was to the detriment of the female constituents of the film industry. Not only did women fail to gain substantial recognition in the honours but they were relentlessly the butt of MacFarlane's jokes (with varied success). Interestingly, perhaps the best reaction the host received was from Best Actress Winner, Jennifer Lawrence who celebrated her mention as an actress who hadn't revealed her body. But this only serves to highlight the negative representation of women asserted by MacFarlane.
We may boo and hiss but MacFarlane is no amateur, in his performance he was acutely aware of his own brashness and its effect on the gathered glitterati. However, as Tim Robey of the Telegraph pointed out, "The problem is, MacFarlane's mere awareness of his obvious horribleness as a presenter was no inoculation against it." Did we learn nothing from Ricky Gervais' obnoxious Golden Globe run? Apparently not. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler struck gold as hosts of the Golden Globes this year without a cheap shot in sight, balancing satire and controversy seemlessly. Performances like theirs are worth revisiting to remind ourselves that those like Macfarlane's are unnecessary, outdated and ultimately unsuccessful.
This whole debate reminded me of a recent episode of The Graham Norton Show in which Shame actor Michael Fassbender was teased by Graham and the other male and female guests for the excessive exposure of his own endowment in the film. Does this demonstrate the hypocrisy inhernet to this kind of issue, the double standards that are at work in the film and television industry? Unfortunatley there is a long way to go in negotiating equality even in the Arts and jokes in the vain of Seth MacFarlane's ultimately reaffirm the representation of the female body as a man's domaine- simulatenously celebrated, condemned and mocked.
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Charlize Theron's reaction to her mention in the song.   |
