So nobody watched the Oscars this year. Surprise, surprise! Americans’ tastes have shifted. Hollywood is no longer a land of gods gracing mortals with their glory. People now seem to prefer the freak show of self-absorbed narcissists self-destructing than watching Hollywood make out with itself at an awards ceremony. Celebrities in fancy clothing behaving themselves and sobbing about how great they are: BO-RING. Celebrities shaving their heads and attacking their ex-husband’s SUV with an umbrella: entertainment gold.

The biggest reason nobody cares about the Oscars anymore is that there’s a huge disconnect between the self-absorbed cokeheads running the entertainment world and what society in general really respects as an artistic achievement. Especially in the last 20 years, unless a film is about axe-murdering lesbian cannibals on death row giving harrowing confessions of childhood abuse, it doesn’t stand a chance of winning best picture. Funny movies don’t even stand a chance of getting a token nomination.

How many of the following films, if released today, would stand a chance of winning?

• It Happened One Night (1934)
• You Can’t Take it With You (1938)
• Gone With the Wind (1939)
• Hamlet (1948)
• An American in Paris (1951)
• Ben-Hur (1959)
• My Fair Lady (1964)
• The Sound of Music (1965)
• Rocky (1976)
• Chariots of Fire (1981)
• Amadeus (1984)

These are just a few examples, and they bring to mind a stunning list of names: Frank Capra, Gene Kelly, Clark Gable, Sylvester Stallone . . . Think about it- would any of these win today? I doubt it, because there are no cannibals, lesbians, or explicit sex scenes that border on rape. A few movies in the 1990′s got it right– Braveheart and Forrest Gump were both solid Best Picture material. But was Shakespeare in Love really that good? Especially when contrasted against the stunning and poignant La Vita É Bella? And Titanic? Really? Lush, spectacular, and gorgeous historical re-creation deserves honor and recognition, but if you really hold that up against Good Will Hunting, can there even be a comparison?

Lately hype, not quality, seems to carry an awful lot of weight. And oh, the politics! All three Lord of the Rings films ought to have taken Best Picture, not just the token award given to the third. Which, incidentally, wasn’t even the best of the three– you gotta give it up for The Two Towers. A Beautiful Mind and Chicago were good, but not as good as the first two LOTR installments.

I signed off from the Academy Awards in 1991, when Beauty and the Beast was robbed by Silence of the Lambs. The artistic and technical achievements of Disney were astonishing, groundbreaking, and forever transformed filmmaking. This was the first feature film to really integrate computer technology with hand-drawn animation. It’s impossible to overstate the significance of what it did to legitimize the importance of computers in the future of filmmaking. I’m sorry, but that has to beat out a very well acted, but overrated, flick about a cannibal in a scary mask. Especially with the crappy movie-of-the-week cinematography, tawdry shock tactics, and predictable cliché ending.

Luckily the Golden Globes, which is a far better barometer of what’s actually good, significant, and an achievement, got it right, giving Beauty and the Beast the kudos it deserved, making it the first animated film to take a Best Picture Award.

The ten minute speeches, the hype, the drawn out ceremony with too many commercial breaks, the narcissism and arrogance . . . Why waste four hours of your life when you can get that all crammed into a half hour of reality TV? Nobody cares about the awards any more, as evidenced by the fact that all of today’s news headlines about them focus on the low ratings, not the winners.

In the meantime, Hollywood, keep staring into that mirror and making kissy faces at yourself. At least when everyone else is tired of looking at you, you never get tired of your own reflection.