MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Oscar for wokest Awards ceremony goes to the Oscars!

MAUREEN CALLAHAN: And the Oscar for wokest, smuggest, most out-of-touch Awards ceremony that’s now thinking about scrapping gender gongs goes to… the Oscars! So when WILL they put it out of its misery?

The Academy keeps performing CPR on a dead patient. As they do in the movies, someone needs to melodramatically grab their shoulders, shake them and shout: The Oscars are dead, you idiot! They’re dead and they’re never coming back!

If you want to know when exactly the Oscars breathed its last breath, look to one year ago this weekend: After slapping Chris Rock onstage, Will Smith accepted his Best Actor Oscar to a standing ovation.

A standing O! That still shocks me, but then I remind myself: This is an industry that turned a blind eye to Harvey Weinstein for decades. A crowd that gave child rapist Roman Polanski an Oscar for Best Director in 2003 and a standing ovation in absentia. A town that regarded Woody Allen a misunderstood genius until that was no longer tenable.

But the Slap and its aftermath — no accident that Chris Rock’s Netflix special premiered one week before this year’s Oscars, live from Jada Pinkett Smith’s hometown — marks the end.

It’s not just down to hypocrisy. Movie stars have miniaturized themselves. We’re more likely to see them on our phones than in a theater. Take Alec Baldwin: Before Instagram, he was sold as a great actor with an anger management problem — the East Coast version of Sean Penn.

After slapping Chris Rock onstage, Will Smith accepted his Best Actor Oscar to a standing ovation. A standing O! That still shocks me, but then I remind myself: This is an industry that turned a blind eye to Harvey Weinstein for decades

Now, thanks to social media, we know: Alec Baldwin is a monster. He’s irredeemable, as is his fake-Spanish baby-hoarding wife. If anything, Baldwin seems worse for being famous, not better. He’s arrogant, entitled, and above all, not sorry. And this attitude is more common than not among Hollywood’s elite.

No wonder the theme of so much film and television this year, from ‘The White Lotus’ to ‘Triangle of Sadness’ to ‘The Menu’ to ‘You’ to ‘Glass Onion’ can be summed up in three words: Eat the Rich.

Not that the Academy gets it. They’re in an endless ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ loop, propping up a sad old corpse and looking forward to the next ceremony — which they promise, every year, will be better than the last. Like an abusive ex-boyfriend, they always say they’ve learned their lessons. They’ll change this time, really. Things will be better — promise.

This was the thinking that brought us Rob Lowe singing ‘Proud Mary’ with Snow White back in 1989. It was the awards show equivalent of Hiroshima. Oral histories have been written about it.

But that’s how long the Oscars have been broken. And the Academy must have PTSD, because ever since the Lowe debacle, the changes they make are tiny. Infinitesimal. Like switching from one host to a host-less year to a year with three hosts.

Or pulling less electrifying categories from broadcast to tighten the show, as they did in 2022, then put those categories back — as with this year, adding a helpful QR code so those of us who don’t care which anonymous nerd wins for sound mixing can study up.

What fun.

This year’s other big fix? No red carpet. Instead, a champagne-colored one. How daring.

This brainstorm comes courtesy of Anna Wintour’s Met Gala team, called in to help lure younger viewers. Because who better than relics from the Paleolithic magazine era — this idea comes, in part, courtesy of 68-year-old Vogue director Lisa Love — to make the Oscars relevant again?

Forget #OscarsSoWhite — now it’s #OscarsSoSlight.

Wokeism has destroyed Hollywood. We’re in a dreary era of ticking off quotas. Just look at the new requirements announced in 2020 — any movie that wants to qualify for Best Picture must meet one of these three:

— At least one racial or ethnic minority in a large role

— A story revolving around women, the disabled, a minority group of members of the LGBTQ community

— A cast composed of 30% of actors from two of the above four categories

Because nothing stokes creativity like ticking off boxes.

And now there’s reporting that the Academy might do away with Best Male and Best Female categories in favor of genderless awards — even though that’s been tried elsewhere and failed.

Non-binary British pop star Sam Smith haughtily called for the BRIT awards to do this back in 2021. ‘I look forward,’ he said, ‘to a time where awards shows can be reflective of the society we live in.’

Well, Sam, the society we live in is still stacked against women. Guess who was left off the list of nominees for the BRITs ‘Artist of the Year’ last month?

Yep. Women. Not a single one nominated.

Smith quickly walked that wish back. ‘There’s so much incredible female talent in the UK,’ he told the Sunday Times. ‘They should be on that list.’

Now there’s reporting that the Academy might do away with Best Male and Best Female categories in favor of genderless awards — even though that’s been tried elsewhere and failed. Non-binary British pop star Sam Smith haughtily called for the BRIT awards to do this back in 2021. ‘I look forward,’ he said, ‘to a time where awards shows can be reflective of the society we live in’

The people’s choice for Best Picture is ‘Top Gun,’ though to read and watch any awards coverage is to hear endless hype over Tár — a nearly three-hour-long art house film seen by 10% of Americans — or ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (seen by 19%), or Steven Spielberg’s ‘Let-me-tell-you-how-I-got-so-great’ origin story ‘The Fablemans’ (12%)

Indeed. If only the powers that be had thought that through. Isn’t it clear by now that wokeness is a buzzkill? That in trying to do right by everyone, you might actually do harm?

As a famous actor anonymously told Entertainment Weekly yesterday: Hollywood ‘is so out of control with the wokeness. I’m a fervent liberal, but wokeness, I think we all agree, has taken over.’

This actor also criticized the ceremony — ‘The whole Hollywood back-slapping, ‘get-a-load-of-me’ . . . just seems to get worse and worse’ and accusations of racism within the Academy itself.

‘When they get in trouble for not giving Viola Davis an award,’ he said, ‘it’s like, ‘No, sweetheart, you didn’t deserve it.’ We voted, and we voted for the five [actresses] we thought were best.’

How refreshing. For Your Consideration, Academy: Candor. Real talk. The call is coming from inside the house.

The problem isn’t with us. Audiences understand complicated characters and storytelling. We love it. But we also want to be entertained. The success of ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ is proof that both can be done.

The Academy can’t face the truth: Their product is terrible, their self-presentation out-of-touch.

That they treated the nomination of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ for Best Picture as a concession — for saving movie theaters and the industry at large, post-pandemic! — says everything.

A recent YouGov poll showed the divide between audiences and the Academy: Of all the films nominated for Best Picture, more Americans have seen ‘Top Gun’ (45%), followed by ‘Elvis’ (30%) and Avatar: The Way of Water’ (27%) than any of the acclaimed indies nominated.

The self-regard of the latter, and its multiple nominations, exemplifies the problem: Hollywood is increasingly inner-focused. We get superhero movies or unglamorous indies — 2020’s Best Actress Frances McDormand defecating in a bucket in that year’s Best Picture ‘Nomadland,’ one year into lockdown, oh joy! — with no in-between.

Yes, even a global pandemic hasn’t shifted the Academy’s perspective. If anything, Hollywood takes itself more seriously than ever. To watch a star like Michelle Yeoh campaign on her race, to repost a gripe on her Instagram account — since deleted — that Cate Blanchett already has two Oscars and doesn’t need a third, feels desperate and craven.

Besides, no one really cares who wins anymore. It’s hard to be invested in movies we haven’t seen and celebrities who act above it all (‘Oh, I was asleep when they announced my nomination’) while hustling like Dickensian waifs for a gold statuette. To quote Ricky Gervais at the 2020 Golden Globes: ‘Accept your little award, thank your agent and your God, and f**k off.’

How to save the Oscars?

It can’t be done.

If there’s any doubt, consider HBO’s decision to air the season finale of one of its newest, buzziest, most acclaimed series right up against the awards. That show’s apt title? ‘The Last of Us.’

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