Controversial Commemoration: The Oscars

Even with the first Oscar win for iconic actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, after several nominations, the Oscars this year actually hit an 8- year low in viewers with only 34.4 million views as compared with the previous years 36.6 million.

According to Variety.com, the problem wasn’t with the younger viewers, which slightly rose compared to last year. Instead it was the six percent decline of adults watching the annual award ceremony that lead to the decline. Personally, I actually quite enjoyed the show.

Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes win Best  Original Song with ‘Writing’s On The Wall” from “Spectre”, “Mad Max: Fury Road,” won a plethora of awards, one of my favorite animated movies “Inside Out” won best Feature Film, and Leonardo DiCaprio winning Best Actor in “The Revenant”.

After being nominated for six Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Awards (with one win), 11 Golden Globes (with three wins), nine Teen Choice Awards (with two wins), nine Screen Actor Guild Awards (with one win), and 13 MTV Movie Awards (with three wins) DiCaprio finally won his first Oscar. DiCaprio winning his Oscar was probably my favorite moment of the entire Oscars, seeing as he’s been waiting for this since his first nomination in 1994 for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”.

The majority of the performances and winning speeches were focused less on the actual win and more about societal/ global problems. For example, Lady Gaga’s performance was based around sexual assault victims on college campuses and DiCaprio’s victory speech was for global warming/climate change awareness.

Overall, even if the Oscars wasn’t as popular with the adults and audience in general, there were lots of favorable highlights and the show still remained television’s top-rated non-sports program of the year.