Best Picture Flop: Stunt, Prank or Mistake?

The Academy Awards, better recognized as The Oscars, are considered “Hollywood’s Biggest Night” but for Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, last night at the 89th Annual Oscars, it was their “Biggest Nightmare”. Coming to the end of the show, when they’re about to give out the Oscar for Best Picture, the most important recognition of the night, they mistakenly handed the presenters the wrong envelope, which was the duplicate copy of Emma Stone’s La La Land win for Best Actress. Dunaway read the wrong envelope but Beatty knew something was not right. The entire cast of La La Land got up on stage and after they were almost done with their acceptance speeches, the stage filled up with show producer and gave Jordan Horowitz, producer for La La Land the correct envelope stating that the winners were in fact Moonlight. “This is not a joke, Moonlight, you won Best Picture” stated Horowitz after the horrendous mistake and Moonlight filled the stage to accept their well-deserved Oscar.

The morning after, people are raging all over social media about how this could not have been a mistake and most of the comments I’ve read state that this was a white supremacy stunt in order to fade away the spotlight on Moonlight, which definitively was the most deserving film for that award. Some comments really got to my nerves establishing that this was all just a big PR Stunt. I could understand how people could have the misconception that a public relation specialist could have been the mastermind behind this embarrassing mistake, we certainly are brilliant. The racist and homophobic public relations specialist that would have wanted La La Land to reign supreme was astonishingly brilliant to switch the envelopes and create this horrific incident. Emma Stone stated to the press that she didn’t understand what had happened because she had the envelope, giving the press the idea that she thought this was all a staged mistake.

What people don’t remember was that after the show, a statement appeared on the screen where the Oscars are explaining how there are two sets of envelopes on each side of the stage and the only people that knew the content inside of these envelopes were the two people handing them out. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that counts the Oscar votes from the Academy, are the only one’s who see the results before Oscar Night. First of all, that was a PR Stunt, clarifying the mistake in order to clean the Oscar’s and the Academy’s century long legacy, their image and reputation and if that were true, which I honestly believe it is, how could a public relations specialist know what’s inside that envelope, take the envelope and switch them?

The biggest misconception about public relations specialists is that we pull these constants stunts because “there’s no such thing as bad press” but in reality, the basis of public relations is to benefit our client. Who was getting benefited with a mistake of such high caliber? In this case, in my consideration, no one was getting any benefit from the mix up. The Oscars were going to be portrayed as racists like last year, La La Land was going to get disappointed after learning the true result and Moonlight were stolen of their winning moment. People should really stop having this prejudice that we specialists don’t work with ethical values in mind or that we constantly pull stunts in order to gain any publicity we can. There’s always a strategy behind our actions as public relations specialists and we don’t move a finger unless we are positive that the outcome is going to be in favor of our clients without hurting or degrading anyone else. If a public relations specialist working for the Oscars staged this, this person would never work a day in their life again. Maybe we, the outside public, don’t exactly know the specialists behind such a big event but everyone in the PR community knows each other and internally they would know who did such an atrocity and their reputation and image would be ruined forever.

There are other theories on this matter, like for instance believing that Jimmy Kimmel, host of the 89th Annual Oscars was behind this and it was all a really bad prank. Kimmel is known for his dark humor and inappropriate jokes so who knows if that could’ve been the case. Also, the Oscars are one of the most watched events on TV during the year. They already had the ratings so they had no need to fabricate this “mistake”. In my case, I believe the blame for the biggest mistake in Oscar history was made by PricewaterhouseCoopers, since they were the only one’s in control of the envelopes. This was corrected pretty quickly so I can imagine that it was just human error, considering that there are two sets of envelopes during the ceremony. Either way it went, the main narrative here is that public relations specialists get the blame for anything that happens publically with their clients and most of the time, its not their doing or their fault. I believe we should all respect the different professions and not belittle all of us for the few bad apples along the way. I think the issue was handled well, with poise, grace and class and the public relations specialist working the event did manage the crisis with the statement published on the air after the show was over.