I have a couple of people I’d like to thank. South African stand-up comedians get a fraction of the feedback they deserve. This is because heightened theatre security has curtailed the smuggling in of dead cats. But to be fair, local stand-ups are slowly mastering their craft. Some of them can now stand up for half an hour at a time.
Perhaps one day, when John Vlismas and Dave the M-Web Dolt are dead and have had their graves ploughed with salt, comedy will thrive in this country. But until then awards ceremonies like the Academy Awards, beamed to a temporarily lobotomised world on Sunday night, will remain beyond us.
It takes a brave man to tell jokes to an audience being garroted by bow-ties, whose gowns are taped on and whose breasts are held in place by tiny pneumatic lifts. When the Oscar for Best Awkward Silence in an Earnest Foreign Film has gone to what Hollywood thinkers call goddam faggoty limeys for the third straight year, you can be sure that the natives and their implants are restless.
One would hesitate to compare Billy Crystal and past Oscar ‘hosts” with rodeo clowns, but consider the boredom-fuelled violence that could have ensued over the years had less proficient joke-writers been toiling in obscurity in the wings. A resentfully ageing actress in stilettos with duct-tape chafing her unmentionables can gore an usher to death in a matter of seconds. Hail to you, unknown writer.
Until we can produce writers capable of taking a sewer-mouthed megalomaniac like Robin Williams and turning him into an affable and witty compére, we will not be able to host any event longer than about 10 minutes. Which will be a comfort to Smuts Ngonyama next time someone moots a live election debate.
But movie awards are only relevant to those who watch movies. Many millions of people struggle to follow complicated plots like that of Blood Fist III. For some, the battle is lost before it’s begun: 40 minutes into Starship Troopers an elderly lady elbowed her way past me muttering about the rubbish produced nowadays.
Perhaps she thought she was watching an avante garde Merchant-Ivory production, and had been waiting in vain for Harry, the repressed bastard son of Lord McDonald, to step lightly over the heap of eviscerated bug carcasses and admit to Prunella — her silk bodice torn by a passing hand-grenade — that he was in fact the author of The Letter, now unfortunately smudged with brain-fluid.
There was no pleasing her, but happily for the fidgeting throng there is sport, a spectacle that, apart from the odd cricket match in India, has no script whatsoever, and where the only moral dilemma is whether to forgive Manchester United cretin-captain Roy Keane one hour or three hours after he stamps on someone’s face and head-butts the referee.
Despite its attempts to persuade us to the contrary, sport is intrinsically unglamorous, and it was a logical step to co-opt Oscar-style celebrations replete with triumphal muzak swirling from the orchestra pit and leggy apparitions in gownless evening straps. The Laureus Awards have even managed to co-opt European royalty, with Prince Balding of Monaco disembarking from the Lilo Royal in the Imperial Swimming Pool to hand out the prizes.
Naturally the sports industry takes itself far too seriously to consider employing a comic, and the resulting seance of self-praise turns into a mute Eurovision song contest, indescribably Belgian in its awfulness.
But through all the speeches and tears one is left unsatisfied. Where, in a celebration of victory, is the triumph? Where is the vain panache, the devastating arrogance that clearly throbs below the surface? Why the middle-class politeness and decorum?
When will a winning captain pick bones from his teeth and tell the truth?
‘Thanks, Johners, yeah. Look, they’ve lost their last 12 games on the trot so we knew it was going to be a doddle. I mean, they have all the natural talent of kitty-litter, innit?”
A dose of frankness would cut the Oscar by at least two hours.
‘I brought a list of people to thank but now that I’m here, I don’t feel like it,” says a radiant creature, sticking out a manicured tongue at beaming enemies. ‘I’m the most beautiful person here tonight, and the industry lobby that won me this award agrees with me. So I reckon you all can kiss my perfect pear-shaped behind. Thanks. I love you, Mom.”
For that, I’d even watch Robin Williams.