As it stands Seth MacFarlane’s hosting job for the Oscars has received mixed reviews . While some are saying he spread his talents the best way he knew how to, some are saying MacFarlane was downright disrespectful , and at times bordered on misogyny.
What seems to be drawing the most anger, is MacFarlane’s musical number of “We Saw Your Boobs” which ran down a list of Who’s Who of actresses in the industry that showed the world their boobs in films. In case you forgot, those actresses highlighted in the song included Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, and Charlize Theron.
Although the Oscar crowd seemed to be able to take the joke, many viewers found the song to be offensive. Vulture wrote ,”As a fun game, count how many actresses he mentions in this song who are portraying rape victims.” A Twitter picked up on Vulture’s comment and drove the point a little further of MacFarlane’s “We Saw Your Boobs” song:
Four of the examples in @ sethmacfarlane “We Saw Your Boobs” song were rape scenes: Boys Don’t Cry, The Accused, Lawless, Monster. Asshole.
— SexPositiveParent (@airialclark) February 25, 2013
In addition, when he wasn’t making fun of 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis’ age and prime pole position to be Clooney’s girlfriend when she grows up, his edgy jokes proved to go above and beyond with a joke about domestic violence during an introduction of Django Unchained. It went like this:
“This is the story of a man fighting to get back his woman, who’s been subjected to unthinkable violence. Or as Chris Brown and Rihanna call it, a date movie.”
That joke didn’t go as smoothly as MacFarlane and the writers would have hoped. However, it begs the question if some media outlets and viewers at home are at all aware of MacFarlane’s brand of humor, notably featured in the offensive not-so-tongue-in-cheek Family Guy , and his film Ted, which at one point sees a cuddly bear performing fellatio on a popsicle . Although MacFarlane could have classed it up a bit for the Oscars, we’re willing to bet that’s not exactly why MacFarlane was hired by The Academy in the first place.
When it comes down to it, it seems that The Academy simply doesn’t know what they want from their hosts. While they continue to be above the looser shenanigans that go on at the Golden Globe Awards, they’ve attempted to make the ceremony cool and youthful by hiring James Franco and Anne Hathaway to host two years ago. When that flopped and failed to impress anyone, The Academy went back to their safe bet with host Billy Crystal. With MacFarlane it seemed like they wanted a bit of edge, without fully backing it up in the end. In summation they were throwing him to the wall, and seeing if he would stick.
What are your thoughts on Seth MacFarlane’s hosting job?