At the end of March 2022, the 94th Academy Awards ceremony was held. This is the most prestigious award for making good films. According to data for 2018, more than 7000 participants of the film academy have the right to vote for candidates (Hoof & Boell, 2019). All of them are divided into guilds, whose representatives vote only in their categories — for example, actors choose the best performers of male and female roles, and sound engineers choose films with the best soundtrack. The exception is the title of the best film — all seven thousand participants vote for it.
In 2022, the drama “CODA: The Child of Deaf Parents” won the title of the best film, and the fantastic “Dune” won the most statuettes — it was highly appreciated for its cinematography, staging, visual effects, editing, sound and soundtrack (“94th Oscars,” 2022). The ceremony was also remembered for the fact that during the live broadcast, actor Will Smith hit comedian Chris Rock for joking about his wife. The award ceremony has been held since 1929, broadcast live in dozens of countries around the world and is one of the most important events in the film industry (Hoof & Boell, 2019). Each broadcast gives many reasons for discussion, including the ceremony chosen for analysis in 2022.
Communication, Media & Regulation
New media broke into the cultural political process with the beginning of the digital revolution of the turn of the millennium. The active use of personal means of communication has opened up new opportunities for the global expansion of the audience of traditional media. New media is understood as multimedia channels of multilateral public communication that have emerged as a result of the digitalization of the information environment.
The media covering the Oscars are mass media that are content-oriented mainly to a youth audience and use non-traditional formats for presenting material. It presents the events of the ceremony with the help of new types of headings and programs, active involvement of the audience and mixing of genres. For the 94th Academy Awards, the technological component of media has come to the fore. Interactive media, which are an integral part of the ceremony, are based on digital data transmission and on-screen visualization of content.
New media is a more flexible interactive tool for the dissemination of information that takes place at the Oscars. It opens up more opportunities for the audience to perceive and convey the shades of the flow of the ceremony compared to traditional journalism. The possibility of establishing multi-subject horizontal connections between millions of viewers around the world has significantly increased the importance of media for the 94th Academy Awards.
Theoretical Concepts
Hateful Communication
The concept of hateful communication is the incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as the humiliation of the dignity of a person or group of persons on the grounds of gender, race, language, etc. This crime belongs to the category of extremist crimes. The topic of extremism does not lose its relevance at the present time. First of all, hate speech concerns vague concepts, which include the concepts of incitement to hatred or enmity and humiliation of human dignity. These concepts are vague and indefinite; in practice, this circumstance causes some difficulties in determining the signs of a crime in the texts of news sources.
Only in general terms are there explanations about what actions incite hatred or enmity. For example, such actions include statements in the media justifying the need for genocide, mass repression and other illegal actions against any race, religion, nation. Hate is synonymous with the word enmity; however, these concepts are still differentiated in the media. The word “hatred” refers to the influence on the psychological state of the reader, and the word “enmity” is a call to readiness for action (Hoof & Boell, 2019). That is, hatred in the media is a kind of emotional state that can contribute to the emergence of hostility, expressed in behavior.
An example of hateful communication is the scandal involving Will Smith, which occurred at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. The actor, who won the award for best actor, hit host Chris Rock in the face. This was caused by the latter’s hate speech disguised as a joke. The incident occurred after Rock commented on the hairstyle of Smith’s wife, Jayda Pinkett-Smith. “I love you, Jayda, I can’t wait to see you in Soldier Jane 2,” Rock said, hinting that actress Demi Moore starred in Soldier Jane with a shaved head (“Will Smith’s Academy Awards,” 2022). After that, Smith went up on stage and hit Rock, and then shouted to the host not to offend his wife.
Pinkett-Smith came to the ceremony with a shaved head, and before that the actress admitted that her hair was falling out. This hateful communication was aimed at people suffering from alopecia. Emphasizing the peculiarity of Will Smith’s wife, the host put a label associated with the army on the woman. The sharpening of attention to the problem from the largest international platform in negative shades could cause a further wave of ridicule to patients with alopecia, which can be considered as hateful communication.
Intrusion on the Right Privacy
In the case of suspected intrusion of privacy by the media, there is a difficult task to find a balance between two competing constitutional rights. The concept of privacy lies between a citizen’s right to privacy and the right of the media to disseminate information. Intrusion on the right of privacy is established taking into account several important circumstances. Its presence or absence is related to whether journalists provided society with information that was significant for society or fueled their curiosity with details of one’s personal life. It also matters whether information was disseminated about an ordinary citizen or about a famous cinema star.
Moreover, when establishing an intrusion on the right of privacy, it is important how the information was obtained: when shooting in a public place, pulled from social networks or transmitted by an anonymous person. Since its adoption in 1991, the Law on Mass Media has given journalists the right to disseminate information about the private life of citizens in the presence of public interest (Hoof & Boell, 2019). No other boundaries and frameworks have been defined. Ethical standards and norms of the profession also speak about the purpose of protecting the public interest. It acts as the only possible basis for the dissemination of information about the private life of the heroes of journalistic publications.
An example of the intrusion on the right of privacy of the 94th Academy Awards is the distribution in the press of a video in which model Hailey Bieber burst into tears. Celebrity tears were caused by guests shouting the name of Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber’s ex-girlfriend (Morris, 2022). In the video, Canadian singer Justin Bieber and his wife, model Hayley, walked along the carpet under the camera flashes. In the background, it was clearly audible how, presumably, fans of the former girlfriend of the artist Selena Gomez loudly chanted the name of their idol.
Apparently, some fans still believe that the singer, whom Justin dated from 2010 to 2018, is the best match for him (Morris, 2022). Haley looks upset, and the author of the content, and many journalists decided that she cried. Then Bieber’s wife asks her assistant to give her sunglasses, apparently to hide the signs of tears and ruined makeup. Interference in the couple’s private life by journalists is not only that they began to actively question the spouses about what happened. They also published numerous articles under flashy headlines with guesses concerning intimate details of Justin Bieber’s romantic life.
Reputation
The concept of reputation is connected with the society’s idea of a particular person, their lifestyle, peculiarities of thinking, and behavior. Reputation consists of personality qualities, behavior, lifestyle, achievements, exposed to the public by the mass media (Hoof & Boell, 2019). Reputation is a stable opinion, and a social assessment of a person based on their past behavior. From this view, expectations arise about human behavior in the future. It can be concluded that reputation consists of stereotypes about a particular person.
Reputation in the media can be positive, negative and tainted. A positive reputation indicates a high level of trust in a person on the part of society. They are supported, encouraged, highly appreciated by the viewers. A negative reputation implies a low level of trust in a person. A tainted reputation implies denigration of a person by rumors, leakage of hidden information from the past, compromising material, and information with a double meaning. Restoration and preservation of reputation implies timely identification of defamatory information, its presentation to a wide audience in the right, favorable light. A lot depends on the interpretation of the fact. The same information can be submitted in different ways by the media, in one case it can discredit one’s reputation, and in the other the media coverage can improve it.
An example of the impact of the presentation of information through the media on reputation can be considered the speech of Joaquin Phoenix for the best actor. At the beginning of the speech, Joaquin thanked everyone for his Oscar victory, but admitted that, having become the owner of the honorary statuette, he does not feel superior to his rivals for the nomination and others present in the hall (Bauder, 2022). Joaquin Phoenix called the opportunity to speak for those who do not have a voice the most important gift that cinema provided him.
Then, in his emotional speech, Phoenix turned to the specifics and global problems of nature. The actor called on the world to change, sacrifice and invent new ways of change that will have a beneficial effect on all living beings and the environment. Joaquin’s speech was not ignored by representatives on the network. They supported Phoenix’s words about the need for change for humanity, which pierced them to the heart. Thus, due to the media’s focus on this speech, Joaquin Phoenix’s reputation has improved even more (Bauder, 2022). The perception of him by the media as a conservationist has raised his ratings.
Obscenity
Stereotyped, discriminatory and sexist publications in the media are a demonstration of obscenity. They are based on the fact that in journalism as a branch of culture, the dominant images of women are still images constructed by men (Hoof & Boell, 2019). The constant sexualization of female images, ageism and humiliating jokes about women’s abilities make up a large proportion of the content in the media. These are mostly humorous media publications.
It is obvious that gender stereotypes in social media reflect gender inequality and stereotyping in the offline environment. The fight against such phenomena should be conducted comprehensively: it is necessary to create and distribute content that would reflect a non-stereotypical view of women. Discrimination against women in the media destroys the foundations of the state policy of equal opportunities for the development of the human potential of women and men. First of all, it undermines the positions of the most active and purposeful women. It becomes a barrier to their careers in prestigious spheres of public life favored by men – in business, politics, and culture.
Footage of the slap that actor Will Smith gave to the host of the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, comedian Chris Rock, was shown around the world. Although Smith, who stood up for the honor of his wife, has already apologized to his opponent for assault, this incident can be attributed to both hate speech and obscenity (“94th Oscars,” 2022). It is obvious that Jada Pinkett-Smith has become the object of sexualization due to the fact that she suffers from alopecia, which causes baldness (Cerullo, 2022). Long female hair in a sexualized culture is considered a symbol of beauty. A few centuries ago in France, it was even believed that only an indecent and lascivious woman was able to cut her long braids.
The matter is that representatives of the male gender on a subconscious level are looking for the woman who can become the successor of their kind in a potential partner. At the level of instincts, it is inherent in the male consciousness that beautiful long hair is the key to a woman’s health. Due to this, men consider long-haired more attractive and desirable since they consider them healthy and able to bear and give birth to a child. Thus, the increased attention on the part of the host to the bald head of Will Smith’s wife is associated with sexualized communication and its inconsistency with sexist gender stereotypes accepted in the media.
Conclusion
With the advent of the Internet, television and radio, the world has become more informational. Nowadays, information is not a privilege of a minority anymore, it is the everyday and necessary content of a wide audience. Communication has changed, which has new means, and, accordingly, new goals. Mass communication has become a translator of the entire information environment of society. It has turned into the most important and one of the main social tools of society.
Mass communication transmit information about socially significant events, while the presented data have an entertaining, informative and educational function. As can be seen from the example of the reflection of various incidents at the ceremony of the 94th Academy Awards, methods of subconscious influence are widely used in the practice of the media today. The attitude of society to certain phenomena or personalities of the surrounding world is formed using various methods that are introduced into the news stream. They automatically cause either a negative or a positive reaction to a particular event in the mass consciousness.
References
94th Oscars to feature first live performance of “we don’t talk about Bruno” from “Encanto”.OSCARS. (2022). Web.
Bauder, D. (2022). Social media explodes during Oscars; TV viewership doesn’t. AP News. Web.
Cerullo, M. (2022). What does a Best Picture win for “CODA” mean for Apple TV+?CBS News. Web.
Hoof, F., & Boell, S. K. (2019). Culture, technology, and process in ‘media theories’: Toward a shift in the understanding of media in organizational research. Organization, 26(5), 636-654.
Morris, W. (2022). The slap wasn’t the only astonishing thing about the Oscars. The New York Times. Web.
Will Smith’s Academy Awards slap was ‘assault’, says Billy Crystal. NZ Herald. (2022). Web.