When did the frock opera become fraught?
The Academy Awards (Sunday, ABC, CTV, 8 p.m.) is the biggest night for movies and the climax of an awards season. That season is longer than usual this year because the Winter Olympics pushed back the preferred February air date. It's mainly been a TV event, really, for years. An event about ratings and demographics, not just the honouring and promotion of movies.
The size of the viewing audience was dropping steadily, year after year and then along came the red-carpet coverage to revitalize the often ponderous, speechy evening. For many viewers, the red-carpet coverage – the frock opera – became the point. It seems it started with the all-entertainment E! channel devoting hours to brief, softball interviews with the stars – mostly women – as they arrived, about frocks, footwear, hair, jewels and nails, and maybe some questions about diet, exercise and parenting.
It was always sexist, trash coverage. Women reduced to perambulating mannequins and assumed to be more concerned about clothes, hair and shoes than their work as actors. But everybody bought into it as mindless fun and an entire industry was built around red-carpet looks; an industry that paid little attention to the women actors as skilled artists bringing characters to life on the screen. Hardly anybody balked.
Only on the fringe, away from mainstream awards coverage, did critics complain that the red-carpet coverage infantilized women, reducing them to mere objects and only underscoring the old Hollywood orthodoxy that women in the industry existed to be exploited and discarded.
That's over. And if it isn't disappearing entirely this year, it certainly will be gravid.
At the core of this year's red-carpet coverage is an issue that reached right into the matter of sexual harassment in Hollywood and the #MeToo movement. Ryan Seacrest, long the pre-eminent red-carpet interviewer for E!, along with Giuliana Rancic, stands accused of harassment in a complicated, fury-filled case.
Last November, Seacrest revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that an allegation had been made again him. A stylist for the E! channel accused him of inappropriate behaviour. Seacrest denied the allegation, and said he'd co-operate fully with any corporate investigation. The Hollywood Reporter also said the accuser "made a substantial financial ask in exchange for her silence." An investigation cleared Seacrest. But, this week, the accuser spoke to Variety and claimed the investigation was inadequate, witnesses had not been interviewed and she had never asked for money.
That's where it stands. The man who epitomized the ebullient, vacant red-carpet interview was accused of misconduct, cleared and is now accused again. How will he react on Sunday? How will the interviewees react to him? In the era of reckoning about sexual harassment, one that changed the tone of parties and red-carpet theatrics at the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards, the reckoning has arrived inside the most empty-headed institution of all in Hollywood. Frocks and mani-cameras be damned, this is a serious matter.
Of course, this is not the first time the theatrics surrounding an awards show have been tainted by outside issues of some seriousness. The #OscarsSoWhite movement a few years back demanded that the issue of race in Hollywood be tackled, even if tangentially and politely on the red carpet. The right, polite things were said. And then there was the less politically charged but female-centric cause captured with the hashtag #AskHerMore. It meant that women actors should be asked about their work, not merely clothes, hair, make-up and manicures. What that amounted to was Elisabeth Moss giving the finger to a mani-cam, though more in jest than protest.
Red-carpet coverage is what matters to many of you, of course. Frocks, footwear, hair and jewels – they all matter more than the merits of movies that many of you haven't seen. It is escapism and allows viewers at home to be caustic with statements about this or that dress and somebody's unfortunate choice of hairstyle. Harmless fun.
No so much, now. The frock opera is fraught; the red-carpet roundabout is in crisis. While you were idly surfing photos of stars in their glamorous gowns, the world changed.
The red-carpet schedule is confusing to grasp this year. E! coverage starts at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. There's an hour of it on CTV, with Ben Mulroney and posse, starting at 6:30 p.m. The official, Academy-endorsed coverage starts on most ABC channels at 6:30 p.m.