The 2012 Academy Awards

This week my column is about what The Human calls “the greatest unreality show on earth”. It encompasses all the things that a reality television show relies upon: drama, intense beauty, freaky outfits that scream “I am an individual! Look at me!”, attention seeking behaviour, romance, mad tasks, and rules. I don’t know who or what a Josh Groban is, but he was right when he tweeted that the red carpet is nothing more than “Best In Show” for humanbeings.

If I’m honest, the arrival of a (faux) middle eastern dictator on the red carpet wouldn’t have been appropriate as a task on Big Brother and it certainly wasn’t especially acceptable when Sacha Baron Cohen did that very thing when he arrived at the Oscars last week. Apparently clutching the ashes of Kim Jong Il in an urn to his bosom. When there are members of our armed forces deployed to the near east makes this stunt less than amusing. And if I was Martin Scorcese, I would have bitten Mr Cohen on the nose for being invited to the Awards as a member of the Hugo cast and misusing it to promote his own project. You don’t get that on Come Dine With Me.

The highlight of the whole event was not Christopher Plummer becoming the oldest codger ever to win a Best Supporting Actor award. The Human squealed with excitement at this juncture. I tried to remonstrate and to explain to her that he hadn’t won for his “performance” as Georg von Trapp in The Sound of Mucus, but she didn’t seem interested at all.

The real star of the show was, of course, Uggie the giant-degu-they-call-dog. I was disappointed that he didn’t receive a special award all of his very own. We animals are never recognised for our contribution to culture. Indeed, we are much overlooked in the reality television stakes. When was the last time you saw animals in a reality television show which didn’t involve them being eaten in a “bush tucker trial”?

The only abstract award seems to be that Angelina Jolie’s right leg has some 47,000 followers on Twitter now. Meryl Streep’s frock looked like gold lamé, which I found profoundly disconcerting. Is it still 1985 in Los Angeles? I know it’s the Oscars, but I don’t think it’s mandatory to arrive at the awards dressed as the gongs.

This year’s Academy Awards was lacking something else too. It was bereft of musical numbers. In the good old days, the Oscars felt like they were never going to end with floor show after floor show. Actually, I don’t know why I’m complaining when I prefer it this way.

And has anyone else noticed the bizarre theme that is starting to trend at this award ceremony? Last year the principle focus was on the English monarch who struggled with speech. With me so far? This year, the focus was on an inaudible Frenchman. What next year?! Angela Merkel signs the complete works of Goethe?

All in all, I was just relieved that this was the shortest ceremony – alongside 2005 – in a quarter of a century. Had it gone on much longer then I might have been forced to dig for freedom, there really is only so much self-congratulatory faux modesty that a degu can stand. Really.