Fair Practice

 The talk around here continues to be about what is right and what is fair. It's a big discussion. One of the places this discussion is heard most loudly is in the lower left-hand corner of our continental United States in the sleepy little burg of Hollywood. There are all kinds of voices raised in anger and frustration about his and that injustice, so much so that quite often the rhetoric spills over into the award shows that they hold on a regular basis to remind themselves of their own importance. 

I should stop at this point to confess my ongoing infatuation with all things Hollywood and an embarrassing infatuation with these same award shows that I am currently about to slag. I am the one who fills out his Oscar ballot with a conscientious eye toward winning the family/office pool. In other words, I try to vote as I imagine industry types would. 

Which is why I cannot imagine how the powers that be in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences chose to simply flick a switch and move eight of the previously major categories into a montage piece wedged into the beginning of the big broadcast. The awards for Documentary (Short Subject), Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Production Design, Short Film (Animated), Short Film (Live Action), and Sound will be  "folded seamlessly into the live broadcast," according to the folks at the Academy. The suggestion of seamless folds occurs to me as a physical impossibility, but I still trying to figure out how Orson Welles got the camera to fly through that sign on top of the El Rancho nightclub and into the skylight. 

Of course, I know the real answer. It's about getting the periodically dirge-like procession of awards and presenters to match the pace of our modern world. Watching a four hour telecast is a burden and a waste of valuable network time that should perhaps be filled with more Dancing With The Stars. This is why over the past few years all the management types have been trying to sap any and all extraneous weight of musical numbers and acceptance speeches that run over the ninety seconds winners are allowed to describe the arc of their careers that ended up with them holding a statue. 

So why not just blow on past those trophies that "no one" cares about? 

Well, back in the olden days, they gave a couple of Oscars to Walt Disney for making Best Documentary Short Subject. I would imagine that if they defrosted Walt's head and asked the man who would be the titular head of the corporation that runs the network that will be broadcasting the Oscars. Or maybe the fair thing to do would be go ahead and do just that and see if the severed cranium of Disney Inc. would be happy to be played off.