February 26, 2007

Oscar’s Back, and Spanx Rules the Red Carpet

Well, the Academy Awards are upon us once again. By the time this goes to press we will all be standing around the water cooler and expressing our shocked outrage about the no-talent pretty boy who stole the Oscar for The Best Use Of Optical Flow-Based Image Manipulation. Set the TiVo – I don’t want to miss a minute!

We are, in fact, TiVo-ing our way toward the climax of The Season Of Eye-Watering Award Shows. This is that magic time of year when we get to watch, transfixed, as every possible subdivision of the entertainment industry gathers together to honor their members who in the past year have accumulated the most headlines without actually being indicted.

We’ve already been through the Golden Globe Awards, which is a sort of dress rehearsal for the Academy Awards. The Golden Globe Awards are presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, so the winners get to brag about their international appeal, while the losers get to say, “Whut do them-there ‘feriners know about art anyhow?”

Then come the Grammies, in which a parade of strangely-clad musicians troop up to the microphone to give all the credit for their accomplishments to God, the sycophants in their entourage and the miracles of pharmaceutical chemistry. I have heard that the Grammy committee plans to introduce a lifetime achievement award for the Rap or Hip-Hop artist who has survived the most drive-by shootings. This will dovetail perfectly with the honorary awards they’ve been giving out for those who didn’t.

The Country Music Awards are a nice contrast to the Grammies. These performers tend to be more down-to-earth and, by and large, more indebted for their success to Jesus and Jack Daniels.

Of course there are the lesser-known shows. My favorite of these is Film Independent’s Spirit Awards, honoring the year’s finest independent films. Independent films are officially defined as, “Films with jack-squat for promotion budgets, so pretty much nobody will ever hear of them.” Watching the Spirit Awards, you can learn about incredibly good work by innovative directors, writers and actors. Of course, you will probably never see any of this good work in a theater unless you live in New York, San Francisco or Cannes.

The best thing about any award show is the Red Carpet. This is the part where all the famous people walk into the venue past interviewers, photographers and adoring masses, and you get to see what the women are wearing. OK, I know that sounds sexist, but that’s just the way it is. A male celebrity’s idea of daring attire is wearing blue jeans with a tuxedo jacket, and Billy Bob Thornton burned that one out years ago.

The women, on the other hand, are always finding new and more interesting ways for their outfits to defy gravity and the censors. Every time a limo door swings open, we are teased with the tantalizing possibility that a wisp of silk will slip or a sequin will pop off, and we may get a momentary glimpse of a bit of anatomy that we could easily see our fill of, just by coughing up $8.50 for a ticket and another $12.00 for a diet Coke and a bucket of buttered popcorn.

I’ve always found all of this really entertaining to watch – purely, you understand, from the point-of-view of the theoretical physics involved.

I have recently become disillusioned, however, by the discovery that these women are not really tempting fate to the extent I had always imagined. It seems that there are clothing designers who specialize in creating these outfits to look daring, while employing the latest technological advances in polymer fabrics and two-sided carpet tape to maintain a family rating for the entire Red Carpet viewing experience.

There is a type of undergarment, called Spanx, that can hide beneath a whisper, and still squeeze two dress sizes off an actress who may have got a little too involved with a tub of buttered popcorn at her movie’s premiere. There are even makeup artists who use an airbrush to add suntans, eliminate wrinkles, and even (I know this is absolutely true, because I read it on the Internet) add the appearance of toned muscles to all those areas that are not obscured by whispers and Spanx.

Oh well. I guess if I wanted reality, along with the genuine possibility of wardrobe malfunction, I should just stick with the halftime shows at the Super Bowl.

Copyright © 2007, Michael Ball

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