Like most years, mere seconds after the Oscars aired the internet became abuzz with articles, GIFs, and photo spreads critiquing the many entertainers that attended, presented, and won at this seaon’s show. And along with typical opinion pieces and strongly worded blog posts regarding the night’s winners and losers, there seemed to be an extraordinarily large amount of attention directed toward the show’s host, Seth MacFarlane. It appears the man who is more or less notorious for stirring up controversy if it means getting a laugh, shockingly enough, earned himself very few laughs and a lot of controversy.
Amy Davidson, in an article for The New Yorker, discussed the many ways she felt MacFarlane tried to undercut and demean women throughout his stint, especially those in the entertainment industry. And while it was certainly hard to ignore his rather blatant disregard for an entire gender, she did go on to include one powerful refuting point in her piece;
“What the women actually showed during the evening was that they worked a lot harder, and a lot smarter, than Seth MacFarlane. Shirley Bassey sang ‘Goldfinger,’ and Adele sang ‘Skyfall’—it’s notable that two of the better moments in the show involved Bond films—and Barbra Streisand was mesmerizing with ‘The Way We Were.’ Either by dint of age or body type or simple strength and craft, none of the three were what the Oscars had been telling women that they had to be—a reminder that it’s best not to listen to guys like MacFarlane.”
Even Buzzfeed, whom we would have expected to be compiling GIFs of embarrassing moments and creating posts poking fun at the many fashion faux paus that this year’s award show brought forth, constructed a piece rather bluntly titled 9 Sexist Things That Happened at the Oscars, dedicated completely to distasteful and borderline offensive “jokes” made throughout the evening. The post includes everything from a jab the Family Guy creator took at women in reference to Zero Dark Thirty, to a joke MacFarlane made about nine-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis dating George Clooney (EW.)
As the internet is known to practically overflow with opinions immediately following a show of this magnitude, it is difficult to gvauge whether MacFarlane is simply the newest victim of mass media or if his displeasing remarks will leave him in the Hollywood doghouse for good. However judging by this article by Vanity Fair entitled The Academy Is Encouraged to Disavow Seth MacFarlane’s “Degrading” Oscar Material, it’s not looking especially good for the man responsible for bringing us Stewie’s strange sentiments and Peter Griffin’s infamous laugh.
Check it out! Even our favorite tumblr account, #whatweshouldcallme, weighed in on the MacFarlane drama.
photo credit: slate.com & US Magazine