Last year, comedian Marc Maron cast author Chuck Klosterman in the role Guest on it What nonsense Podcast. Both Discuss many things (Including Klosterman’s then-new book, But what if we are wrong?which he was there to promote), but one of them was sports – and the special thrill it offered to the public. For Klosterman, sporting events promise the most dramatic of things: an unknown outcome. Unlike other widely watched events — the Super Bowl halftime show, the Grammys, the Oscars — the main attraction of sporting events is that their endings are, by definition, unpredictable. Inside them, anything can happen.
Good. While you can say a lot about Sunday’s Oscars, you can’t say that the glitzy awards show was boringly predictable. The 89th annual Academy Awards, at its conclusion, brought a mixture of confusion, shock and complete, profound joy to viewers as Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway teamed up to announce the winner of Best Picture, and proceeded to do so, due to behind-the-scenes fluctuations. , advertised the wrong movie. Chaos – and really good television – ensued. Tired East Coast residents were summoned from their bedrooms back to their living rooms, on the grounds that, “Oh my God, you have to see this.” Twitter exploded with jokes – about Bonnie and Clyde being at it again Schrödinger’s envelopeabout getting “Dewey defeats Truman.” A fitting update for the Oscars. It was late Sunday evening, and the unexpected happened in the most unexpected way, and it was all, as my colleague Adam Serwer put it That summed it up perfectly, moonlit.
However, the whole thing was a reminder of how rare it is for the public, collectively, to witness something truly unexpected. This was live television, with all the potential human error that live television can bring — chaos, correction, drama, grace — in its depths but also at its peak. What happened on Sunday followed roughly the same mechanics that gave the world all those Left Shark memes, the “Nevertheless, She Insisted” tattoos, and the term “wardrobe malfunction”: The Oscars sparked interest as a surprise. The “Best Picture Mistake” became infamous overnight for much the same reason its predecessors did: It is very rare, in the world of high-production media, for expectations to be frustrated.
We know a lot nowadays. We, in fact, certainly Lots about politics, human psychology, Hollywood award shows, and the right ingredients for guacamole. At a time when Google has made much information instantly accessible, knowledge has become a virtual presence in American cultural life. Oh, this show is supposed to be excellent. This movie is supposed to be terrible. Poke bowls are the thing now. Major cultural events, like the Grammy Awards, the Emmy Awards, and the Academy Awards, are in many ways the culmination of this situation: we know precisely what to expect from them. We can say, as events unfold, that everything went according to plan, because we knew from the beginning what it was supposed to be; We can also do these reports with a note of disappointment. There are few things more boring, after all, than meeting expectations.
In this context, the Oscars bash between Beatty and Dunaway was a boon to the audience (and perhaps to ABC’s future live audience ratings). This was also Chuck Klosterman’s view of Maron, which was promptly proven wrong. Here was the “anything can happen” logic of a live sporting event, applied to Hollywood’s highest, most celebratory, expectation-driven ritual. That was powerful: At a moment in the United States that often sees “reality” as something that can be produced and experienced, the blunder at the Academy Awards for Best Picture was a powerful reminder that reality still has an impact. Special production values.
Yes, this mistake was also a lot of other things: shame on him moonlightwhich richly deserved to win Best Picture, and whose victory threatens to be overshadowed by the error and drama that followed. Shame for La la landwhose producers gave full acceptance speeches before learning that their “win” had been announced in error. A field day for photographers, both professional and non-professional, who captured reaction shots on stage, backstage and among the celebrity crowd. A moment of grace, as well La la landProducer Jordan Horowitz responded to Jimmy Kimmel’s solemn suggestion that everyone should get an Oscar with a polite challenge: “I’d be really thrilled to hand this award out to my friends from… moonlight.And also, of course: a metaphor for the slings and arrows of the 2016 elections. An endorsement of the current popular culture obsession Alternative facts. The vehicle for many, many jokes At the expense of Steve Harvey.
Mostly, though, it was a twist ending that arrived, by the looks of things, in twisted ways: a shocker that came not at the hands of a skilled producer, but at the hands of a twisted reality. Twist endings may have been a hallmark of the events of 2016 and early 2017 — the reality show that served as the 2016 presidential campaign found the frontrunner endorsed by pundits defeated in the final episode; The 2016 World Series featured another victorious underdog. Super Bowl LI found the projected winners, but only after the game went into a thrilling overtime. But their transformations occurred within events whose endings were by definition unknown. The Oscars were a ceremony that was shockingly interrupted. It was an expectation, convincingly foiled.
And so: he was powerful in a way that few things can be, in a world that knows so much and expects, in the end, so little. in article to Screen crushing Last year, Erin Whitney claimed, “Our culture is built on anticipation, where movies end with teasers for the next installment in the series, and we never allow a moment of respite to process what we’ve just seen. We talk about movies years before they debut.” Analyze TV plot twistsand Expect albums For years before hearing a single song. This whole process has led, as Whitney said, to “the slow death of surprise.”
Perhaps the best evidence of this is the fact that marketers have recently focused on surprising consumers, with capitalism doing its best to keep this special kind of magic alive. the The album dropped. the Surprise TV show. the Trailer produced secretly. The live television musical in which anything can happen. They are trying to capture What Klostermann was conveying to Maron In that What nonsense Interview: “Sports is a connection to real life,” author Put it down To the comedian. “This is not something that anyone can control or write. It’s this unknown thing.” “There’s something really interesting about the phrase ‘nobody knows,’ because you don’t experience that anymore,” he added.
You won’t, until you do, until this bug makes its way onto Hollywood’s most glamorous and scripted stages. Sunday’s best flip photo is not only already iconic; It is also already the subject of conspiracy theories by a wide range of Oscars believers who suggest, among other things, that the mistake was As a result of President Trump’s retaliation against Jimmy Kimmel; or A prank made by Kimmel himself; or The Dark Dealings of Leonardo DiCaprio. They may have a point; It is unclear at this time how the wrong ticket ended up in Warren Beatty’s hands. But what they forget is what Klosterman knows, and what all those cheering Sunday audiences with him know: that the best conspirator is often people’s great capacity for making big, dramatic mistakes.