If there had been a spirit animal at this year’s Oscars, it would have to be said that it was Les Dawson. Perhaps an unusually aggressive and unfunny Dawson. But the 94th Academy Awards proved to be an evening unexpectedly rich in “Her Indoor” gags for the boys, while women stood on the sidelines and embarrassedly joked about their own physical shortcomings.
For example, the most generous reading of Chris Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith is that he finds the idea of a woman with short hair just hilarious. This does not seem improbable. After all, his previous gag concerned the domestic nightmare that would await poor Javier Bardem should he win Best Actor, but his wife, Penélope Cruz, failed to get Best Actress. You know how women are!
Four years after #MeToo, Oscars feminism has gone flimsy and performative at whiplash speed. This was difficult to predict: the dial only seemed to rotate in one direction.
In 2018, just days after his announcement as host, Kevin Hart stepped down from Oscars duties after homophobic tweets were discovered. This year marked the return to the podium of the hosts for the first time in four years: all women, none known for taking prisoners. But under the stewardship of new TV producer Will Packer — a longtime Hart collaborator, as it happens — no one on Sunday’s stage seemed as keen to undo any progress as Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes.
You know how women are! Chris Rock presents at the Oscars. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty ImagesIn one skit, Sykes dragged herself upstairs as Richard, the father of Venus and Serena Williams, apparently only to complain about how much hair she had to shave off her legs. Schumer’s routine focused on advising audiences that three years after giving birth to their son, she would still lose all of her baby weight. She then dangled from the ceiling in a skin-tight Spider-Man outfit, which she transformed into a floating punchline — a human piñata to be slammed with our best lines.
This was the kind of shtick Rebel Wilson peddled ahead of her recent radical health campaign. As seen at the Baftas two weeks ago, Wilson traded it in for some sort of angry horniness instead, with most jokes sticking to the submission of her desperation to do that particular actor that particular sexual favor.
The lucky recipient of Sunday’s sexually-distressed baton was Hall, a dignified and interesting actress who sort of mentioned she was single on her first appearance and summoned handpicked actors for a “naked” Covid test and eventually gave it on her second appearance Jason Momoa a considerable smears.
As the night wore on, Dawson’s influence waned. Next year they should simply redesign the statuette in the image of Benny Hill.