The most recent hosting debacle for the Academy Awards is owned by the indifferent-looking James Franco and the way-too-earnest Anne Hathaway. I suppose given Franco’s penchants for anything taboo or non-traditional, his exhausted look and treatment of hosting duties is less of a surprise than it is a sardonic way of treating the spectacle. Regardless, it was still poor and tried to pander way to much to a younger audience.
But, it won’t go down in history like the 61st Academy Awards have.
It had Snow White, it had a mortified audience, dancing stars, a mock-up of Mann’s Chinese Theater, song mash-ups, and Rob Lowe — fresh off of a 1980’s sex tape scandal. (Irony: If Rob Lowe were a ’90s or new millennium actor, a sex tape would have skyrocketed his popularity instead of ostracizing him,no?)
In truth, there’s been much more made about this debacle because its evidence is super difficult to find — even on Youtube, where you’ll be privy to Lowe and Snow White singing a pretty terrible parody of “Proud Mary.” Other sites that come up in a Google search advertise the video, but the screen is often filled with the declaration: “This video has been removed by the user.”
It turns out the Academy has quite the iron fist when it comes to embarrassing moments and editing them out as if life were a film. (Enter metaphysical moment here: Cleansing the Internet of this moment relegates it to nothing more than an urban legend. The ones who truly get hurt here are Lowe and Eileen Bowman, who played Snow White. They are the main points of criticism here, and each regurgitated picture or snippet from the broadcast focuses mostly on these two. Plus, this is truly a testament to the power of the Internet and its way of revising history from moment to moment.)
Philosophical jargon and rhetoric aside, below is the video, currently being poached from the only site I could find with the video in tact:
http://videos.sapo.pt/lKZQghUeztLnH6Q2mWhl
