The Oscars have a host problem.
This is not something that began this year. In fact, the job of presiding over the Academy Awards ceremony has recently been a gig where careers go to be damaged. The host is usually announced with great fanfare; anticipation builds as to what spin they’ll put on the shindig; and invariably, after everything is said and done, the reviews call the entire thing disappointing for one reason or another. Going all the way back to at least David Letterman’s time hosting the show in 1995, the event is usually personally unsatisfying for the host (most vow never to do it again), and the host has to navigate the competing and often conflicting interests of Hollywood—the need to be funny but not too adult for network television, to be topical but not too controversial or too political, and to appeal to younger viewers, but without breaking out of the paradigm of previous broadcasts.
In other words, it’s a situation that its producers set up to fail, by wanting the appearance of edginess while playing it safe. Over the past four years, the broadcast has lost nearly half its audience. Whether this is due to the particular hosts; the appeal (or lack thereof) of the movies contending on each year’s show; controversies over diversity; or the general decline in broadcast network audiences in the past two decades is up for debate. However, the situation has led the academy to make decisions to deal with it that have opened the entire affair up to ridicule. The introduction of a “popular film” category is largely seen as an attempt to pander to viewers and has been mocked as such. And the academy’s board of governors is perpetually in search of a host who will bring back viewers.
Tuesday evening, it was announced comedian and actor Kevin Hart would be the host of the broadcast, with Hart stating: “I am blown away simply because this has been a goal on my list for a long time.” This seemed to cover two bases for the academy, since Hart might attract younger viewers more than someone like previous host Billy Crystal, and an African-American host helps in deflecting some of the #OscarsSoWhite criticisms. But the very next day blowback against Hart began when old tweets, press statements, and parts of a stand-up routine were noticed for their homophobia. Hart initially refused to apologize: “Our world is becoming beyond crazy, and I’m not going to let the craziness frustrate me … I’ve addressed this several times … I’ve spoken on it, I’ve said where the rights and wrongs were.” But by Thursday night, when it looked like Hart might go from having an Oscars problem to having a future career problem, he backed down, tweeted an apology to the LGBTQ community, and stepped down from hosting the broadcast.
There’s an argument to be made about due diligence on the part of the academy, especially after high-profile incidents in which television shows have been canceled and people have been fired from multi-million-dollar projects because of stupid tweets.
And sparks of this debate have flared up from time to time in past years, with Patton Oswalt, Chris Rock, and Jerry Seinfeld claiming comedians can't really say what they want to say anymore within the parameters of comedy. The internet has made sure that nothing controversial will be forgotten. A video of it will show up on YouTube, leading to arguments over whether it's then being used to censor any material a group of sufficient number doesn't feel is appropriate. When Trevor Noah was chosen as Jon Stewart’s replacement as host of The Daily Show, his prior tweets came under scrutiny as people questioned whether or not they were offensive to the point of disqualifying him from keeping the job.
The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee writes:
The 39-year-old star of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Ride Along has quipped his way to becoming one of the most dependable box office stars working today with his films totalling over $3.5bn worldwide. His social media presence has also been a major key to his success with 34 million followers on Twitter and over 65 million on Instagram and with ratings for the ceremony continuing to spiral down, the Academy clearly hopes he’ll help draw viewers back in … But there’s one small catch.
Hart has a rather vile history of documented homophobia, ranging from offensive standup clangers to dumb interview statements to puerile tweets to a whole embarrassing film filled with it. In 2010 during his Seriously Funny standup special, Hart delivered an extended joke based on a fear of his three-year-old son Hendrix turning out gay.
One of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay. That’s a fear. Keep in mind, I’m not homophobic, I have nothing against gay people, be happy. Do what you want to do. But me, being a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will. Now with that being said, I don’t know if I handled my son’s first gay moment correctly. Every kid has a gay moment but when it happens, you’ve got to nip it in the bud!
Hilarious, right? A gay kid! No, thanks!
As his profile rose, the joke resurfaced and in a 2015 profile with Rolling Stone, he was asked to discuss it. After attempting a poorly conceived justification claiming that it’s really all about his own fears and insecurities, he then blamed the climate.
“I wouldn’t tell that joke today, because when I said it, the times weren’t as sensitive as they are now,” he said. “I think we love to make big deals out of things that aren’t necessarily big deals, because we can.”
And Hart’s response after that didn’t work:
The Oscars are less than three months away.
Take a look at the roundelay of performers who've embraced show business' most perilous assignment, and the failure rate is enough to give even that rock climber in Free Solo vertigo. Ever since Billy Crystal passed the baton in 2004 (he made a one-off return that drew a tepid response in 2012), the Academy has struggled to find the right anchor, and nobody has been willing to run the gantlet more than twice. Among the two-timers: Kimmel, Ellen DeGeneres, Hugh Jackman, Chris Rock and Jon Stewart — most of whom have vowed never to do it again (though "never" has a certain elasticity in Hollywood). Contrast that with Oscar's glory days, when Johnny Carson hosted five times, Crystal nine and Bob Hope a swoon-inducing 19.
All took on the task when there were only three major broadcast networks and the Oscars were a must-see event in a less ruthlessly competitive environment. Now the host is expected to boost the ratings, which means he or she must have wide name recognition; must be funny (without being tawdry), topical (without being controversial), politically savvy (without being too partisan), young (but not so young as to scare the Academy's governors) and satisfactory to a coalition of competing interests, including the Academy's president, its sprawling board and ABC — not to mention Donna Gigliotti, who was named to produce in October and who'll be joined by veteran director Glenn Weiss.
The need to win over so many constituents has put off some of the best candidates, who see little upside in taking on a job that pays only low six figures but requires weeks of work; that usually results in a media flaying; and that does little to boost the host's profile.