Of course, the most fun are the dresses - backless, strapless and shameless - and the rictus smiles of the nominees, forced to cheer when they lose and clap when they want to cry. Usually there is an extra treat when a winner descends into Gwyneth Paltrow blub or Tom Hanks gush and we can see our own toes curl, live and exclusive at home. Judged on these grounds, this year's Oscars have been a sore disappointment. Cher did not appear in her underwear; Liz Hurley was fully clothed. Kevin Spacey did not sob dry, thespian tears; Sam Mendes did not declare himself "King of the World!"
As a showbiz event the Academy Awards may have been a let down (at least to the handful of Sky Premier viewers able to watch it), but that should not detract from what happened. For this year Hollywood confounded the critics who dismiss it as a mere junk factory, defied those who repeat the dread charge of "dumbing down" - and produced a clutch of substantial, thoughtful films. Those who see the sound stages of California as the propaganda arm of US imperialism ought to think again, too. Far from serving as a glorified advertising agency for the American way, the moviemen have taken pleasure in exposing the darker, uglier aspects of the great republic. Hollywood is getting serious - and, far from blushing at the prospect, Oscar has stood and applauded.
Just look at the field for best picture. The winner, American Beauty, is a slick, elegantly-played probe into the dysfunctional reality of apple-pie suburbia. Where once Hollywood might have exported picture-postcard images of domestic life - think Doris Day and Donna Reed - now it lays bare the adulterous, dope-smoking, disintegrating truth. American Beauty shows it all: mid-life crisis and repressed homosexuality, male redundancy and female neurosis, under-age lust and all-too-easy violence. It's no advert for America, and yet its writer, stars and director stand knee-deep in rose petals tossed by their peers.
The movies it beat to first place are no less lacerating. The Insider is a detailed, angry attack on corporate capitalism - specifically, the tobacco industry and the television business which bows to it. The Cider House Rules weighs in on abortion and child abuse; The Green Mile squares up to racism and the death penalty. Even The Sixth Sense, the most conventionally commercial of the five nominees - all of which did well at the box office - is an unexpectedly sensitive film. No wonder the New York Times ran its assessment of the Oscar field for 2000 under the headline: "The US needs more Prozac".
Is that what explains this sudden, self-critical gaze in the Hollywood mirror? Are Americans so depressed that all they want to see at the movies are sadness, estrangement and pain? History suggests the very opposite might be true.
Flick through the Oscar record books and you soon spot a pattern. When America is in the doldrums, it yearns for escape and finds it in the cinema. In the teeth of the Depression, Americans queued up for Busby Berkeley's chorus-girl choreography and the singalong fantasy of the MGM musical. They did not want realism: they had enough of that at home. During the second world war, they longed for laughs (Going My Way, starring Bing Crosby, was a rare comedy winner of best picture) or romance: Casablanca took the prize in 1943. In the chilly years of the cold war, there was comfort to be had from Around the World in Eighty Days or An American in Paris. A decade later, after the shock of John F Kennedy's assassination, Americans needed more diversion: top honours in the mid-60s went to My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. That seems to be the rhythm: Oliver! cheering folks up during Vietnam, Rocky pepping the spirits after Watergate.
So much for the years of famine. In good times, America seems to lose its need for sweets, allowing its storytellers to deal in harsher truths. In the post-1945 rush, when a war had been won and America was supremely confident, Hollywood did not revel in jingoism and cheerleading pride. Instead it fretted over alcoholism, the abandonment of war veterans and homegrown anti-semitism in The Lost Weekend, The Best Years of Our Lives and Gentleman's Agreement respectively (winners for 1945, 46 and 47). At the height of the mid-80s boom, when America was flush, it finally felt ready to watch a tough movie about Vietnam - with Oscar nodding to Oliver Stone's Platoon in 1986.
The rule seems to hold good even now. As the US enjoys its longest-ever period of unbroken prosperity, Americans forked out a record $7.5bn last year in movie tickets - to stare at an unflattering reflection of themselves. They have enough money in their pockets to sustain an assault on consumer culture like Fight Club. They have enough food on the table to watch the unravelling, lost families of Magnolia or Tumbleweeds. When the real world is light enough, people can take a glimpse of darkness - in the dark of the cinema.
But it is not just a matter of economics. What the studio executives have understood, the politicians have, too: in times of wealth, people yearn for something more. When their material needs are met, they start to wonder about the rest of their lives. That is why much of the campaign talk in this year's presidential race is of an America that knows it has material value, but worries about its values. "We know we are wealthy," muse the candidates, "but are we healthy?" It is in this terrain - values - that Al Gore and George W Bush will slug it out until November. Working on the assumption that the economy is more or less taken care of, they will pose the same questions that Hollywood has been asking in its latest crop of movies. Is the American family breaking apart? Is abortion sometimes the only morally just option? Is the law powerless in the face of the tobacco companies?
Perhaps we shouldn't get too carried away. Philip Dodd, the shrewd culture-watcher at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, thinks Hollywood is still Hollywood, not yet an academy of risk-taking inquiry. It rewarded American Beauty because it looked edgy, when in fact its chief targets live safely outside Hollywood's backyard - chief among them a militaristic redneck, a traditional Hollywood hate-figure. The Cider House Rules is similarly safe, says Dodd; as an implicit attack on the anti-abortion Christian right, it was bound to go down well in liberal LA. Whereas The Insider, which works as a critique of any business - including Hollywood - was too close for comfort: it walked away Oscar-less on Sunday.
Still, even if the Academy has its misgivings about movies of substance, audiences have not. They have flocked to these films, and to others like The Matrix and Being John Malkovich, which dare grapple with 21st century questions of virtual reality and altered consciousness. They are proof that, in these days of material well-being, our anxieties do not end. Our leaders need to hear that concern; perhaps they should get out more - starting with a trip to the movies.
