When the Oscar ceremony began last night, surely there was only question on people's lips: what was Chris Rock going to do? His decision to stick with hosting an awards show darkened by storm clouds of controversy seemed like a no-win situation - whatever he could do, or say, would not change the snubs, or the seemingly systematic repression of minorities within the Hollywood production machine. (As upsetting as, say, Creed's snubs were, the real fact was that not enough opportunities are being given to those who need them - Danny Leigh pointed out that only one black person has ever been nominated for Best Editing: Hugh A. Robertson, for Midnight Cowboy in 1969.)
But from his opening line - "Man, I counted at least fifteen black people on that montage!" - it was clear that Rock was going to address the problem head-on. And for ten minutes, Rock delivered some great stuff. He called the Oscars the "White People's Choice awards"; he bluntly declared, "You're damn right Hollywood is racist"; and he made jokes with the kind of disarming edge that made his stand-up comedy so great in the first place: "The in memoriam montage is just going to be black people who were shot by the cops on the way to the movies!"
Slightly less successful were his attempts at easing the tensions in the room, and pandering to a largely white crowd. When he talked about black people in the 60s as being too busy "being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer," there was the uncomfortable sentiment that the problems with Hollywood weren't important enough to treat seriously. And the swipes at the #AskHerMore campaign seemed a little off-putting, especially considering the fact that, earlier in the year, sexism in the industry was as pressing an issue as race.
Still, the monologue worked, and the rest of the show was uncharacteristically entertaining, at least for a while. There were plenty of unpredictabilities on offer, namely Mad Max: Fury Road's surprise sweep of six - SIX! - Oscars in technical categories. I can't have been the only one overjoyed by Mark Rylance's ousting of Sylvester Stallone in the Best Supporting Actor category, a genuine triumph of performance over politics and the Oscar "story". And who expected that Spotlight would really win Best Picture? After Crash beat Brokeback Mountain in 2006, I think it's safe to say we all gave up on the Academy rewarding five-star films; yet here we were, seeing the hackneyed offerings of The Revenant and The Big Short ousted in favour of something genuinely brilliant.
Elsewhere, though, everything went as expected, in plodding fashion. The middle section was particularly dire: Alicia Vikander won Best Supporting Actress; Inside Out won Best Animated Feature; Son of Saul won Best Foreign Film; Carol got nothing; the Earth revolved around the Sun; five cups of tea could barely keep me awake. The absolute nadir came when the fucking Minions presented the award for Best Animated Short, and Don Hertzfeldt's amazing World of Tomorrow lost out to some overrated film about bears (no, not that one.)
Alejandro González Iñárritu won Best Director, Brie Larson won Best Actress, and, of course, Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor. Larson deserved it; so did DiCaprio, in a way, though maybe not for this particular film. But what made this section of the show - and some otherwise numbingly dull segments - watchable was a focus on real-world issues. DiCaprio brought up climate change, saying, "Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted." This echoed the sentiments of everyone's favourite Bag Lady, Jenny Beaven, earlier in the show, who highlighted the possibility of Mad Max being "horribly prophetic ... if we're not kinder to each other, and if we don't stop polluting our atmosphere."
In light of winning Best Picture, the producers of Spotlight expressed hoped that the film could effect change in the Catholic church. And while I thought Lady Gaga's performance of "Til It Happens to You" was about as subtle as a punch to the face, it attempted to say something about the very real, very serious issue of college campus rapes - so important, in fact, that the Vice President Joe Biden introduced the song. It must, therefore, have been doubly painful for Gaga to lose out to Sam Smith's wet sneeze of a Bond song; but even he tried to bring light to LGBT issues, albeit in a hilariously naive, misguided fashion. (Elton John was sitting right there when he announced that no other openly gay man had won an Oscar.)
Surely this was the best way to use the Oscars, as a platform to effect real-world change? The more interesting event will be next year's ceremony, when we can see if any of this has stuck - or whether this relic of "old" Hollywood will be forever doomed to remain in the dark ages.
