By Jesse Cataldo

“What’s with all these awards? They’re always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler.”

Almost 30 years after the fact, Woody Allen’s cry of disbelief from Annie Hall still rings true. Award shows are everywhere, populating seemingly every niche of society, rewarding achievement for the most mundane of accomplishments and arguably, transforming every aspect of life into a kind of joyless contest. Of course, in this culture of self-celebration it’s nearly impossible to top the film industry, especially considering this dizzying statistic: the amount of award trophies handed out in 2005 outnumbered the total number of studio films – by a ratio of 2:1.

So what do we need the Oscars for? There are plenty of reasons, but all of them boil down to one; the churning, tradition-soaked spectacle of it all. The ceremony by this point is a kind of holiday, one that marks the end of the cinematic year, opens the floodgates for what’s become a necessary media explosion, and breeds enough water-cooler discussion to last for months.

However, the fact remains that for the average viewer, the presentation itself is barely watchable. For all its assumed pomp and glamour, the ceremony is boring, over-long and especially in Sunday’s case – nauseatingly self-important.

By bringing on Jon Stewart to host, the Academy at least bowed to the realization (spurred on by rapidly plunging ratings) that a change needed to be made. Chris Rock’s in-your-face attacks last year caused uproar and did little to help viewership. This year, Stewart was a good choice, someone with even more cool points and a more subtle sense of mockery.

Overall, Stewart contributed some incisive comedy, but he was drowned out by the waves of self-congratulation that flooded the room consistently throughout the ceremony. No matter how many sarcastic, ironically detached hosts it manages to employ the Oscar’s main flaw remains that it cannot separate itself from the ridiculously high regard it holds itself in. Not that it seems to have any interest in doing so. This kind of disparity creates a fractured, awkward performance, with a comedian host on one side poking at an institution that’s laughing without actually listening.

This was never clearer than after a montage of scenes from “issue films,” in which Hollywood loudly applauded itself for challenging social barriers. Stewart quipped “and none of those things were ever a problem again.” Everyone laughed, but is there any less chance of something exactly the same being there next year?

So that was the Oscars, Crash won best picture and a hip-hop track won best song – momentarily absolving everyone in a 30 mile radius of all their white-liberal guilt – and we all learned a valuable lesson about racism. Once again we had Hollywood to thank for allowing us to sleep at night, and what a beautiful night it was.