Movie lovers gathered around their televisions Sunday night to watch the most comprehensive award show of the season — the 89th annual Academy Awards. Justin Timberlake started the show with his upbeat nominated song, setting the stage for host Jimmy Kimmel. The award ceremony had its fair share of blue ribbons, inevitable jokes made at a celebrity’s expense and flying candy. What the program also had an abundance of — though not expected and certainly not wanted — was mistakes.
The accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has been in charge of overseeing the voting for the Oscars for the past 83 years. Since then there has been only one mistake, in 1964, when the wrong winner was announced for best music score. 2017 marks the second time an error of this scope has occurred.
When “La La Land” was announced as the winner for best picture, the cast and crew exclaimed and went for the stage to accept the award. Less than five minutes later, the room took a chaotic turn when it was revealed that the true winner was “Moonlight.” The wrong envelope, one labeled for best actress, was handed to Warren Beatty by a PwC employee before he announced who would take home the award for best picture, according to an article from The New York Times.
Though this was an unintentional mistake, the blame falls on PricewaterhouseCoopers and they should accept responsibility. The firm has recognized that the snafu was made under their watch, though they did pass off part of the responsibility to simple human error, according to the Times article. The piece mentioned that this mistake could threaten the reputation of the accounting firm, which is considered to be one of the top four accounting firms in the world. Though this was, in the end, one person’s mistake, the firm must be held accountable for this monumental mess up. Their job and what they’ve done for the past almost seven decades is to count the votes so the correct winner can be announced. It’s not likely that an envelope confusion will affect the accounting firm’s reputation to do accounting work, as the two are not within the same sphere, but this mistake will continue to be associated with the company’s name. It’s a shame that this award show has been produced for 89 years without a failure of this breadth, and when it happens, it was for the best picture category and a rightful winner whose moment would’ve meant so much in such turbulent times.
Though some, including the program’s own host, would argue that the Oscars are “just an award show,” this mistake took away the well-deserved moment for “Moonlight.” Every top stories from Monday morning shows are about “La La Land” accidentally receiving the award rather than congratulating or celebrating the accomplishment of “Moonlight.” In recent years, the Academy Awards have been criticized for majorly acknowledging only white actors, prompting the popular twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. This could’ve been a great moment for that movement, but instead, it was overshadowed by the mistake of one envelope hand-off. The 89th Academy Awards is expected to be the most watched non-sporting event of the year and it’s a big deal to a lot of people. “Moonlight’s” win had the ability to gratify those who were feeling ignored by the Academy yet the award and headlines were given to another film.
An error to this extent, made on the final award of the night which viewers wait tirelessly for, makes the entire Oscars ceremony look unprofessional. For “La La Land,” the cast and crew were stripped of an award that had been wrongfully given to them, and for “Moonlight,” the film lost their moment. The 89th annual award ceremony had other moments that contributed to making the night, essentially, a joke. The memoriam included the image of a producer who wasn’t actually deceased. Junior Mints fell from the sky in parachutes to rival the pizza Ellen DeGeneres ordered several years ago. An entirely new collection of memes was created from the awards, from Ryan Gosling whispering into a woman’s ear to the moment the real card was presented for best picture. The combination of these events have not only made viewers question the professionalism of the Oscars, but also how much the awards truly mean on a grander scale.
