A Look at Awards Season

The 2011 movies awards season has come and gone, leaving behind a stream of awards for this year’s critically acclaimed darlings like The King’s Speech, The Social Network, and Black Swan.

However, it appears as if viewer interest waned in this year’s awards season, as the “king” of all award shows, The Academy Awards, attracted 37.9 million viewers, 9 percent less than last year’s show. The blog Alt Film Guide,http://www.altfg.com/blog/ noted that dips in the number of viewers was even larger for less popular awards shows like The People’ s Choice Awards.

Among viewers who did turn in to watch the big awards shows, disinterest, disgust, and displeasure seemed to be common criticisms. Viewers and critics widely voiced unease at this year’s Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais, whose barbed insults at the audience members seemed more vicious than in good fun.

Much animosity was also hurled at this year’s Oscar co-host James Franco, who was generally considered to be one of the less impressive recent Oscar hosts. Respected film critic Roger Ebert used his Twitter account to make several less-than-flattering jokes and comments about Franco’s flat performance. This sentiment was mirrored by publications like Entertainment Weekly, which also criticized the show for being boring and unexciting in general.