Did Everyone Hate Seth MacFarlane At The Oscars?
Seth MacFarlane has wrapped his first gig hosting the Oscars, and it looks like it might be his last. It seems like there is hardly an article about his performance at last night’s ceremony that does not include the word “sexist,” “racist,” or “misogynistic” in the title.
MacFarlane’s off-color routines included a song-and-dance number about films where prestigious actresses expose their breasts; a joke that 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis will soon be old enough for George Clooney; another joke saying Rihanna and Chris Brown think the gratuitously violent Django Unchained is a “date movie;” and suggesting that it’s not important to understand Salma Hayek because she’s hot.
He made one joke about Kim Kardashian being hairy, and seems to have turned her into a feminist hero over night.
Spencer Kornhaber at The Atlantic called MacFarlane banal, writing that there’s no (humorous) surprise in saying “dumb things about other peoples’ gender/racial/sexual identities.”
Margaret Lyons at Culture Vulture went even further, laying a lifetime of sexism and the institutional gender disparities of Hollywood at the feet of MacFarlane’s Oscar performance:
Yes, I can take a joke. I can take a bunch! A thousand, 10,000, maybe even more! But after 30 or so years, this stuff doesn’t feel like joking. It’s dehumanizing and humiliating, and as if every single one of those jokes is an ostensibly gentler way of saying, “I don’t think you belong here.” All those little instances add up, grain of sand by grain of sand until I’m stranded in a desert of every “tits or GTFO” joke I’ve ever tried to ignore. [...]
I dream of someday watching women win all the non-performance categories, of women making as many films as men do, of women and men being nominated for a comparable number of awards. There are a lot of reasons why that day is far, far in the future.
Still, pretty much everyone liked his hosting more than James Franco‘s.
While critics have made many valid points, I thought this comment from Reddit offers some perspective.
What do you think?
Not going to say that he was right on point, he could have toned it down some, not only adults watch the Oscars. Yet over all, it was a good show, and he was a pretty good host.
I hated Seth MacFarlane long before the Oscars.