Ben Stiller
Inglorious Oscars?
I have a confession to make. I did not watch the Oscars live this year. In fact, all I did was watch clips from the 82nd annual Academy Awards on You Tube the following morning. But, aside from sparing myself from the 3 1/2 hour broadcast, I did manage to pick up on a disturbing trend in this year’s telecast.
As a writer, I tend to focus on the jokes the award show writers open the show with. I look forward to seeing which nominees the presenters will skewer and which might be spared.
The co-hosts this year, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, kicked off the evening by going after their It’s Complicated co-star, Meryl Streep.
“Meryl Streep holds the record for most nominations as an actress,” Martin explained. “Or as I like to think of it … most losses.”
But some of the jokes had an uncomfortable edge to them, as when Martin said about his co-star, “Anyone who has ever worked with Meryl Streep always ends up saying the exact same thing: ‘Can that woman act!’ … And ‘What’s up with all the Hitler memorabilia?’
Streep laughed, as did the crowd, although I wonder how many of the younger members of the audience got the reference to her title role in 1982′s Sophie’s Choice.
One could have let that joke slide, but the hosts weren’t through yet.
Martin observed, “In Inglorious Bastards, Christoph Waltz played a Nazi obsessed with finding Jews. Well, Christoph (Martin gestured out to the crowd) … the motherlode!”
That joke drew a roar of laughter from the packed auditorium. And I myself couldn’t help but laugh, even if the joke promotes the stereotype that Jews run Hollywood, it was still funny.
Later in the show, comic actor Ben Stiller poked fun at the special effects filled film Avatar by presenting the ‘Make-up’ award dressed as a Na’vi. Stiller, wearing blue face paint, a wig and a tail, addressed the film’s director James Cameron in the fictional Na’vi language after taking to the stage. The next morning, Israeli TV pointed out that if you listen carefully to Stiller’s gibberish you can definitely make out, “Pesach…Borei Pri Hagafen’.
After his long Na’vi speech, Stiller translated. “That means, ‘this seemed like a better idea in rehearsal’.” Stiller also explained his choice of costume with, “It was between this and the Nazi uniform, but the show seemed a little Hitler heavy.”
The odd thing is that the Oscars have never been strangers to Jewish jokes. Jewish comedian Billy Crystal hosted the show numerous times and often worked in some ethnic humor; and who can forget non-Jewish Oscar winner comedian Robin Williams addressing the Miramax heads in his acceptance speech with, “I want to thank the misphocha Wienstien, Mazal Tov!’ But the Nazi jokes in this year’s award show seemed to be out of place, even with Inglorious Bastards as one of the night’s nominees.
Of course there have been comic films made about Hitler in the past. Everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Mel Brooks has taken his turn, but one wonders if the jokes today have crossed the line and trivialized something so serious.
The most well known recent example is the various Hitler dubbing videos appearing all over the internet. There are hundreds of parody videos on YouTube of a climactic scene from the 2004 movie, “Downfall,” in which Hitler displays a frightening tantrum in the presence of his officers. YouTube posters have taken to pasting humorous subtitles over the action. One of the spoofs, in which Hitler complains about the lack of parking spaces in Tel Aviv – which generated protests from Holocaust survivors and others – still gets circulated. I was surprised to see it posted recently by someone I know on a community list to which I belong. I did not find it funny.
I often wonder how many of the Oscar joke writers are Jewish, and if many of them are, does it make the Hitler jokes ok? We tend to let those Nazi jokes slide if it’s Mel Brooks (‘Springtime for Hitler’ in The Producers) or Jerry Seinfeld (who gave us the phrase ‘Soup Nazi’), but should we? Is it a matter of (poor) taste?
Or perhaps this is all much ado about nothing. Maybe I, and the over 30 million viewers who watched the show live, should just ignore the Oscar jokes and heed co-host Steve Martin’s advice as he closed the opening routine of the Oscars with, ”… And if you’d like a transcript of tonight’s show, then you should really think about getting a life.”
About the Author
The writer has an MA in Creative Writing from Bar-Ilan University.
Ben Stiller is online
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