Critics blasted Oscars host Seth MacFarlane on Monday for “crudely sexist
antics” and peddling “offensive” Jewish stereotypes, as the Academy Awards post
mortem got into full swing.
Hollywood stars take seats for unpredictable Oscars
Host Seth
MacFarlane performs onstage at the Oscars on February 24, 2013 in
Hollywood. Critics blasted MacFarlane on Monday for “crudely sexist
antics” and peddling “offensive” Jewish stereotypes, as the Academy
Awards post mortem got into full swing.
Others said the “Family Guy” creator, brought in to appeal to younger viewers
with edgy humor, was simply dull — while satirical website The Onion had to
apologize for an expletive tweet about the youngest ever Oscar nominee.
“Well, that didn’t work,” wrote the Los Angeles Times’ television critic at
the start of a full-page review of the more than three-hour 85th Academy Awards
telecast Sunday night.
“Despite the valiant efforts of Adele, Barbra Streisand and a surprisingly
witty Daniel Day-Lewis… (the show) was long, self-indulgent and dull even by
the show’s time-honored dull-defining standards,” she wrote.
MacFarlane, also the creator of potty-mouthed bear star Ted, was part of the
latest attempt by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to shed its
old-fashioned image, while maintaining its Tinseltown prestige.
Indeed, the opening segment of the show riffed on whether MacFarlane would do
a good job as Oscars host — with “Star Trek” star William Shatner appearing in
character by videolink from the 23rd century, to tell him how badly it had gone.
Critics said the section was over-long, too self-referencing — and notably
blasted a song called “We Saw Your Boobs,” which listed the actresses who had
appeared topless on screen.
“Watching the Oscars last night meant sitting through a series of crudely
sexist antics led by a scrubby, self-satisfied Seth MacFarlane,” wrote culture
bible The New Yorker.
“That would be tedious enough. But the evening’s misogyny involved a specific
hostility to women in the workplace… It was unattractive and sour.”
A sketch with Ted provoked some of the harshest criticism. The bear appeared
with his big-screen buddy actor Mark Wahlberg, and made a series of jokes about
having sex with audience members and an orgy at Jack Nicholson’s place.
He then joked about Jewish control of the American movie industry, saying his
real name was Theodore Shapiro, adding: “I would like to donate money to Israel
and continue to work in Hollywood forever. Thank you.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an anti-Semitism watchdog, blasted the
jokes as “offensive and not remotely funny.”
“It only reinforces stereotypes which legitimize anti-Semitism. It is sad and
disheartening that the Oscars awards show sought to use anti-Jewish stereotypes
for laughs,” said ADL national director in the US, Abraham Foxman.
“For the insiders at the Oscars this kind of joke is obviously not taken
seriously… But when one considers the global audience of the Oscars of upwards
of two billion people, there’s a much higher potential for the ‘Jews control
Hollywood’ myth to be accepted as fact.”
In a separate row triggered by the Oscars, The Onion apologized Monday for
using an offensive sexually charged word to describe nine-year-old Quvenzhane
Wallis, the youngest ever best actress nominee for “Beasts of the Southern
Wild.”
“On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhane Wallis and
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was
circulated last night during the Oscars,” said Onion chief Steve Hannah.
“It was crude and offensive — not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s
commitment to parody and satire, however biting,” he wrote on The Onion’s
Facebook page.
Source: AFP