Just because I’m right on the pulse of things, an Oscar rant several days late. Let it be known that it wasn’t through choice that I found myself sat in front of E! on Oscar night. Now I’ve never plucked E! out of the channel guide as my chosen station of viewing pleasure before. From what I was subjected to, E! appears to be a channel that is using the word “Entertainment!” in its loosest sense.
First up, you had Ryan 'Idol' Seacrest carpet-side revelling in live broadcast and showing an uncanny ability to miss the subtleties of humour. Prime example was causing film machine Steven Spielberg to verbally facepalm in his direction when quizzed on whether he was nervous on the night: “I should be fine Ryan, the only time I would have to worry about being nervous was if I was on a live broadcast...” – “Steven! Steven! This is E! we are actually broadcasting live around the globe RIGHT NOW!” – “YES RYAN. I KNOW. THAT WAS THE POINT OF THE COMMENT. IRONY, YOU TUXEDO CLAD WALKING HAIRCUT.” *
*I may have used a small degree of artistic licence when transcribing.
The next justification for pushing on towards the midnight hours came from the Sky Gallery, or similarly named celebrity goggle platform above the red carpet, where Kelly Osbourne and a tanned lollypop grinned and gushed over the variety of dresses being paraded in front of our eyes. Interviews with Oscar nominees were quickly shrunk down to a one inch thumbnail as we were treated to glorious full screen coverage of people exiting cars and searching about for the entrance. Also a good five minutes were spent pouring over footage from recent red carpet events to factually prove in complete eureka that Natalie Portman’s baby bump had been increasing over time. I shit you not. I think it was around this point that I got driven away to my sleep hovel to creak through next day at work, no doubt missing out on other nuggets along the lines of “as the day goes on, it gets darker”. Oh, and Kelly said “boobs” at one point which apparently is highly offensive and an apologisable expletive on US TV. Its not like she said fuckbags or anything.
If all of this wasn’t enough to Tippex my soul from existence, every three minutes your eyeballs were repeatedly punctured by the SAME TWO ADVERTS for other shows on E! It seems that the main theme of programming on the station is based around reality shows centred on complete female voids that look like Gods practice run for the shining beacon of life that is Kim Kardashian. What plot that exists is themed around dumping these women in a random celebrity city hotspot of America which they are to TAKE ON. “Taking on” appears to consist of hanging around in VIP bars, romantic involvement with a Sirloin steak on legs and flicking shiny black hair around whilst shopping.
The cherry on the top of my E! experience was advert spam for some sort of awful virtual reality Oscar experience. You too can waste MINUTES of your life on from your web browser of choice by becoming an Oscar nominee for the night. Apparently the Oscars experience in a nutshell is:
- · Having wet yes men plead with you to wear their clothes/bling/shoes
- · Owning a small dog
- · Retina sacrifice via paparazzi flashes on the red carpet
- · Being interviewed by a lollipop with a tan
Notice anything missing? The one thing that possibly sums up how drastically wrong this entire celeb-mong of a channel is? At no point in the Oscar experience do you actually WIN an Oscar for the actual WORK and ACHIEVEMENT which the entire event is meant to be about. Just give A-listers awards for being alive in future, people will still happily tune in to gawp down a lens.
I would like to thank E! for inspiring me to splurge on for what seems like forever on something that I intended to be a short paragraph.
*tears and exit stage right*
