Awards Show Lookback: An Emotional, Crazy Grammy Night and A Wonderfully Satisfying Oscar Night
One month ago, we witnessed the 62nd Grammy Awards, and two weeks ago, the 92nd Academy Awards. Typically I enjoy writing up recaps of each show individually, given the real difference between the world of Music and Cinema, and especially given the difference in the quality of the usual winners. This year, however, I feel like the awards shows presented interesting parallels (or perhaps parallels isn't correct....same magnitude but different directions?). As such, enjoy a consolidated awards show recap:
The Grammys
It's impossible to discuss the 2020 Grammys without first acknowledging the horrible event that immediately preceded it. Like it or not, the ceremony will always be inextricably connected to the shocking news of the helicopter crash that tragically took the lives of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, as well as seven others. There was no denying news of that magnitude was going to influence the show anyhow, but especially so with the proceedings taking place in Staples Center, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers, and as host Alicia Keys put it, "the house that Kobe built."
The news broke about four hours before the Grammys began, and there was immediate speculation that the show would be cancelled. Instead, the show did go on, but the night was full of tributes. 8-time nominee Lizzo kicked off the show by declaring "Tonight is for Kobe!" before launching into a medley of her nominated hits. Immediately afterwards, Keys came out to perform a monologue, but in lieu of the typical witty banter, she started by acknowledging the tragic crash, and offering profound thoughts on the importance of coming together in the midst of grieving a loss, and the power music has to initiate that. The powerful opening was punctuated by a quick performance by the host and Boyz II Men of "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday," which finished with the camera quietly panning to a spotlight shining on Bryant's jersey hanging in the rafters. Late in the show, DJ Khaled and John Legend performed their collaboration "Higher"; originally intended as a tribute to the slain rapper Nipsey Hussle, who features on the recording, the artists expanded the tribute to include Kobe and Gianna. Given the severity and sudden nature of the shocking news, the tributes to Bryant were extremely well pulled-off and thoughtful.
There's no question that there was a certain pall cast over the entire Grammy night, but the crazy thing is that wasn't even the only contributor to what was perhaps the weirdest awards I have ever seen. Far from it, actually. The tone was set (or maybe just best exemplified) by Tyler, The Creator's brilliant and bonkers live performance. The divisive niche rapper would then go on to win his first-ever Best Rap Album, invite his mom on stage during the acceptance speech, then liken the accomplishment to being invited to play video games without the controller plugged in. What a night for him. His performance was immediately followed by the odd decision to have Aerosmith and Run-DMC do a live performance. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two legends of the 80s didn't translate very well to the 2020 stage, turning in one of the worst, most confusing performances we've seen in recent years. Shortly afterwards, the Grammys did a tribute to Prince, for some reason, three years after they had done a tribute to Prince. They had Usher perform it, for some reason, and brought out British avant-garde pop artist FKA Twigs....but not sing, for some reason, only to pole dance, for some reason. None of it made much sense to me, and you couldn't help but feel like this performance could have been swapped out for the presentation of more awards (only 7 categories were announced on the broadcast). I feel the same way about the inexplicable performance of "I Sing The Body Electric"-- yes, from the 1980 film Fame --which featured, among other confusing appearances, Common rapping a verse.
Another strange occurrence was the delightful phenomenon of artists openly cheering for others to win. The first award on the broadcast given, Best Pop Solo Performance, was awarded to Lizzo, but not before she was caught hoping for her competitor Beyoncé. Much later in the night, cameras caught Billie Eilish mouthing "Please don't be me," to no avail, as she won the award in question. Eilish also clarified immediately after her Album of the Year win, that she thought "Ariana [Grande] deserves this," and the camera panned to an equally humble Grande, who waved Eilish's gesture off, and shouted at the young star to "enjoy your moment!"
If Billie didn't heed her hero's advice, then she must have truly had a miserable night, because essentially the entire night was the 18-year old's "moment." Thanks to her album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and its hit single "bad guy," Eilish became the first artist since 2003* to sweep the four major awards: Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. (*I kept seeing news outlets and social media post a much earlier year as the last time this happened, but unless Wikipedia is lying to me, Norah Jones definitely accomplished this feat in the 2003 Grammys.) For the second consecutive year, it was hard to complain too much about the biggest award of the night: When We All Fall Asleep was not just a commercial smash, it was near-universally well-received. Just like last year, my personal favorite of the nominated albums was victorious; Billie's album ranked second only to Beyoncé's concert album, which was not nominated, on my year-end list. That said, it was an all-too-familiar feeling to see Black artists almost entirely shut out of the major awards, with little to no hip-hop representation in particular. Not only did Lizzo, one of the biggest sensations of 2019, whiff on all nominations except Best Pop Performance, Billie's win for Record of the Year denied a victory for the genre-bending Li’l Nas X for his megahit “Old Town Road.” In a decade that has produced albums like Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Frank Ocean's channel ORANGE, Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly, Beyoncé's Lemonade, and Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer, every single Album of the Year winner in the 2010s has either been a white indie band or a white female pop artist. That's not to say that all winners have been undeserving, of course, but anyone (like myself) hoping that the continued nomination of little-known R&B singer H.E.R. and double wins for Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” in 2018 were a sign of the changing times for black artists would be disappointed.
The Oscars
The 92nd Academy Awards, meanwhile, were the mirror image of the Grammys before them: an exercise in the familiar, yet yielding truly surprising results.
For the second consecutive year, Hollywood's biggest night forsook having a traditional host, but after a rousing opening number from Janelle Monáe, Steve Martin and Chris Rock, both two-time Oscar hosts themselves, ensured the monologue tradition was slightly upheld with an often rambling but ultimately memorable 5-minute introduction. Much of the 3+ hour show from that point on had the usual characteristics: classic movie montages, award presenters with a couple minutes of groan-inducing teleprompter banter, an "In Memoriam" segment that was accompanied by a Beatles song (seriously, I swear it's either a song from a film or a Beatles song every year) and that inevitably made the masses angry by excluding at least one name-- in this case, Luke Perry. The acting categories in particular had no surprises, either. Laura Dern and Brad Pitt took home the supporting awards, while Joaquín Phoenix and Renee Zellweger took home Best Actor and Actress, respectively; all 4 actors capped off a virtual clean sweep of the 2019-20 awards circuit.
But, where an exciting Grammys ultimately fell into a familiar pattern of rewarding white pop stars, the Oscars really took a turn for the unforgettable when it leaned into its diversity. This year's nominee field inspired the return of the #OscarsSoWhite protest hashtag, with just one actor of color represented out of the twenty acting nominees (Cynthia Erivo, nominated for Best Actress for her portrayal of Harriet Tubman in Harriet ). The ceremony was clearly conscious of this, opting for presenters of color as often, if not more often, than white presenters. I can't say it didn't feel a little condescending for these artists to be relegated to presenting duty, but for the casual viewer like myself, it was a joy to see the likes of Mindy Kaling, Maya Rudolph, Anthony Ramos, and Zazie Beetz, instead of the usual revolving door of Hollywood elites. Uktarsh Ambudkar, a fairly unknown actor and comedian stole the show with a "recap rap" well into the ceremony, which ended on a note requesting more respect for actors of color.
And then there were the awards themselves; the first indication that something different was afoot were in the Screenplay awards. First, Best Adapted Screenplay went to New Zealand actor and comedian Taika Waititi, for the lovable albeit divisive Jojo Rabbit. It was a fairly significant upset, with most pegging Little Women or The Irishman as favorites in that category. Immediately afterwards, Best Original Screenplay, expected by most to go to Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood instead went to the South Korean film Parasite. This was a sleeper pick, but conventional thinking was that Parasite's triumph on the night would be relegated to the Foreign Film category, with perhaps one win elsewhere, as was the case with 2018's Roma and 2012's Amour, the last two foreign-language films to garner Best Picture nominations. What probably nobody was expecting was for Parasite to become the Academy Awards' Billie Eilish. But indeed, in a category that had been won almost exclusively on the awards circuit by 1917's Sam Mendes, Bong Joon-ho won Best Director for his film. Bong became the first Korean director to win this award, but is actually the 3rd consecutive non-White, non-native English speaker to win, and in fact the 7th of the last 8 to be as such. It's a remarkable sign of the respect for filmmakers around the World, but after Alfonso Cuarón's Roma was upset by the divisive Green Book last year, fans and pundits alike wrote off a foreign-language film winning top honors at the Oscars any time soon. So you can imagine everyone's surprise when, after a beat, and a look to the audience with a surprised reaction, Jane Fonda announced the Academy Award for Best Picture to Parasite.
It was a stunning win, and will go down as one of the more famous moments in Oscar history (it probably would be the most memorable Best Picture reveal ever had someone not given Warren Beatty the wrong card in 2017), but lest you think this was a decision made simply to appease the growing anti-#WhiteOscars sentiment, it was a deserved win. Parasite is a force unlike any other in recent cinematic history, and was a cultural zeitgeist the likes of which we haven't seen at least since Get Out. It commanded an aggregate rating of 96/100 from critics, making it the highest-rated of 2019 and the 7th highest-rated of the entire decade. Bong Joon-ho and co. earned every accolade they got, and then some.
It was the first time in a long time that by the end of Oscar night, I was truly delighted rather than disappointed. I hope it won't be the last.