The Oscars: Return to the boys club

We may have all just witnessed “the end-of-men Oscars,” said Dana Stevens in Slate.com. On a night when an unusually strong lineup of movies divided the awards fairly evenly (see below), host Seth MacFarlane’s “steady stream of lady-diminishing wisecracks” put the spotlight on an undercurrent of male anxiety about “the ascendant power of women” in showbiz and beyond. While women were supplying many of the show’s high points—including Adele and 76-year-old Shirley Bassey each belting out a theme song from a James Bond movie—MacFarlane delivered the low. After setting the tone with a song-and-dance number called “We Saw Your Boobs,” he offered a belittling comment about every female nominee—even cracking that 9-year-old actress Quvenzhané Wallis would soon be too old to date George Clooney.

“It was pretty staggering,” said Elissa Schappellin Salon.com. At an event designed to honor and reward the best performances of the year, “MacFarlane let Oscar nominees in on a little secret: We don’t see the work you’re doing. We’re too busy staring at your tits.” And the creator of Family Guy wasn’t done yet. He joked that Jennifer Aniston was secretly a stripper. He said that Salma Hayek didn’t need to be heard because she’s so pretty. “It’s frustrating enough to know that 77 percent of Academy voters are male,” said Margaret Lyons in NYMag.com. Did women in the industry have to be reminded that they’re not really members of the club—that “they matter only insofar as they are beautiful or naked, or preferably both?”

An Oscars night co-hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler can’t come soon enough, said Amy Davidson in NewYorker.com. But at least one man who took the stage knew how to crack a joke without demeaning half of his industry. When Daniel Day-Lewis accepted his record-setting third Best Actor Oscar, he quipped that he had gotten his title role in Lincoln only after the director’s first choice— Meryl Streep—agreed to do a Margaret Thatcher biopic instead. The joke worked because the whole audience instantly wanted to see Streep as a drag Lincoln, not so she’d become “fodder for a future MacFarlane number” but because they could imagine the strength and subtlety she’d bring to the role.

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And the winners were…

Best Picture: Argo

Best Director: Ang Lee, Life of Pi

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables