The most memorable moment of last night’s telecast of the 89th annual Academy Awards is assuredly the Best Picture category, where for the first time in the awards’ history, the wrong winner was announced and chaos erupted. It seems someone gave Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who were presenting the category, the wrong envelope before they walked on stage. Moonlight, based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney which details the life of a black man coming to terms with his sexuality, was the true winner over La La Land, the neo-romantic musical dramedy, which had been seen by many critics as a sort of salute to “Old Hollywood” and had tied the record for most nominations (14) by any film.
Other highlights were the victories in both acting categories of Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea and Emma Stone as the female lead in La La Land. Affleck, who portrayed a grieving New England handyman, beat out Denzel Washington for his role in adapting August Wilson’s Fences for the screen, and was able to overcome some of the whispers about sexual harassment allegations which hung over his nomination the entire awards season. Stone earned the nod for her portrayal of Mia, an aspiring actress and barista trying to make it in Hollywood—and falling in love along the way.
After two years where the Oscars were criticized as #OscarsSoWhite for overlooking black actors and films about African-American experiences, this year’s nominee list was remarkably diverse, with six black actors receiving nominations—a record. This resulted in victories for Viola Davis and Mahershala Ali in the Best Supporting Actor categories. Davis’s first Oscar victory comes for her role as a beaten-down-by-life housewife in Fences, for which she had already won a Tony Award playing the same role back in 2010. Ali’s victory, playing an affable crack dealer who’s also a benevolent father figure in Moonlight, is notable for his being the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar.
Of course, things got political, especially since this was the first Oscars under the Trump regime. And starting with the opening monologue by host Jimmy Kimmel, many presenters and winners either directly or indirectly addressed their resistance and disapproval to Trump policies. There has been a long history of using the Oscars telecast for political statements and protest, including Marlon Brando refusing his Best Actor award for The Godfather by sending Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather in his place, to Vanessa Redgrave and Paddy Chayefsky trading differing views from the lectern.
But there’s also a question of whether it matters or changes any minds.
After the 2016 presidential campaign was over, many of the postmortems ascribed a kind of populist-by-way-of ignorance strategy to Steve Bannon and the Trump campaign. The method to Bannon’s madness is not really new or surprising for Republicans. In fact, it’s just a little more transparent. He positions the elites, establishment, media, etc., as being adversarial to the public and something that’s fake and to be destroyed, while also attempting to paint those groups as out-of-touch rich liberals who care more about the concerns of minorities, trees, and endangered animals than poor white people in the Rust Belt or Appalachia. And when these voters are told their views conflict with reality, it’s not because they’re wrong. No, it’s turned into some “out-of-touch” liberal calling a group of people stupid.
Of course, this also applies to scientists when they say climate change is a problem, or anyone with an M.B.A. who says economics doesn’t work that way when Paul Ryan starts having Randian fantasies. Anyone who can be categorized as “establishment” has their views discounted and the waters muddied. It becomes about the messenger, instead of the accuracy of the message.
So ... when a group of wealthy Hollywood actors, producers, and directors spend a night expressing their politics during an awards program, do voters in purple areas listen? On the one hand, it gets the message out there and exposes people in a major prime-time live event to a point of view. On the other hand, does an autoworker in Michigan or factory worker in Ohio give a shit what Hollywood thinks about immigration policy?
Even if they don’t hit the off button, 44 percent of Trump voters find awards speeches “too political” while Clinton supporters want more politics at the Academy Awards; 43 percent say they want winners to reference Trump’s temperament in their speeches (compared to 8 percent of Trump voters), 39 percent would like more discussion of women’s rights at the Oscars (8 percent for Trump voters) and 34 percent would like more talk about Trump’s seven-nation travel ban (7 percent for Trump voters).
In general, 68 percent of Trump voters say they “dislike” political speeches at the Oscars while only 23 percent of Clinton voters feel the same. About the only area of agreement is that neither side finds Oscar acceptance speeches particularly convincing: Only about a quarter of respondents on both sides of the political fence said their opinion about an issue has ever been changed by an awards show.
Shortly after Justin Timberlake had the Dolby Theater hopping with the nominated song Can’t Stop the Feeling, Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue took aim at the new faux-president, while also asking for unity: “If every person watching this show … if every one of you took a minute to reach out to someone you disagree with, someone you like and have a positive, considerate conversation—not as liberals and conservatives, but as Americans—we could make America great again.” The camera then panned to Hacksaw Ridge director Mel Gibson, and Kimmel said he’s not going to unite us. “This is being watched live by millions of people in 225 countries that now hate us,” Kimmel told the Dolby Theater. “I want to say thank you to President Trump. Remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars were racist? … It’s gone, thanks to him.”
Kimmel also joked that “In Hollywood, we don’t discriminate against people based on what countries they come from. We discriminate on them based on their age and weight.”
- When Iranian director Asghar Farhadi won for The Salesman, the award was accepted on his behalf by Anousheh Ansari, famed for being the first female space tourist. Ansari read a blistering letter from Farhadi, who declared last month he would not attend the Oscars in the wake of Trump’s executive order blocking citizens from Iran and six other predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S.
“I’m sorry I’m not with you tonight … My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and from the other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law which bans immigrants entry into the U.S. ... Dividing the world into the ‘us and our enemies’ categories creates fear — a deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which themselves have been victims of aggression. Filmmakers can turn their cameras to capture shared human qualities and break stereotypes of various nationalities and religions. They create empathy between us and others — an empathy we need today more than ever.”
- Trump’s immigration policy was also in the spotlight when The White Helmets, about the Syrian civil war, won best documentary short. U.S. immigration authorities reportedly barred its 21-year-old cinematographer, Khaled Khateeb, from traveling to Los Angeles for the Oscars. Director Orlando von Einsiedel noted, “It’s very easy to feel these guys have been forgotten, the war has been going on for six years, if everyone here could just stand up and remind them that we all care that this war ends as quickly as possible.”
- Barry Jenkins, who won best-adapted screenplay for Moonlight along with Tarell Alvin McCraney, told viewers, “All you people out there who feel like there’s no mirror for you, that your lives are not reflected, The Academy has your back, the ACLU has your back, we have your back, and for the next four years we will not leave you alone, we will not forget you.”
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Actor Gael Garcia Bernal took a shot at Trump’s border wall plan while introducing best animated film: “Flesh and blood actors are migrant workers. We travel all over the world. We construct families, we build life, but we cannot be divided. As a Mexican, as a Latin American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I’m against any form of wall that wants to separate us.” And when Zootopia won that animation category, director Rich Moore pointedly noted, “We are so grateful to audiences all over the world who embraced this film with this story of tolerance being more powerful than fear of the Other.”