The Oscars ceremony on Sunday last week was long and boring, as it has been for a few years, but this year, its shortcomings landed differently. Hollywood’s waning influence, which registered most glaringly last month in the large number of American nominees who showed up in London for the BAFTAs — not something they were inclined to do in better times — gave the ceremony a sense of low-stakes irrelevance that was frankly a relief from the rest of the news cycle. Still, the question lingers as to why the actors and presenters largely, and mercifully in my view, stayed away from mention of US President Donald Trump.
After the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles in January, the classy thing to have done this year would have been to cancel or at least radically downsize the Oscars ceremony, but of course no one involved was going to vote for that. Instead, audiences were treated to a muted spectacle celebrating movies with record-breakingly small box office returns, including The Brutalist, in which actor Adrien Brody relived the US postwar construction boom in real time, and Anora, one of the lowest-grossing best pictures of all time, about an exotic dancer who marries a rich Russian. (What could be behind the deep and abiding fascination of straight male directors — and novelists and podcasters — with the “sex worker community”? That is right, it is altruism.)
In 2017, in the wake of Trump’s first ascent to the presidency, there were many fiery speeches from the Oscars podium, among them talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue, which was dominated by Trump content; a defense of immigrants led by the actor Gael Garcia Bernal; and director Barry Jenkins entreating those in need of help to reach out to the American Civil Liberties Union. This year, by contrast, there was almost nothing: a decent Anora-related joke by the host, Conan O’Brien, about Americans being “excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.” The actor Zoe Saldana referring pointedly to her immigrant parents. And some criticism of the US government by the Israeli-Palestinian team behind No Other Land, the winner of best documentary.
If it is cowardice, it is not of the ordinary kind. At the 2017 Oscars, there was a running gag about actor Meryl Streep and Trump premised on the then popular idea that Trump was a big dummy who fluked his way to the White House. That tone does not work now. In fact, given the five-alarm fire of US politics, comic flippancy about Trump has to be calibrated more finely than the broad, bland platform of the Oscars is perhaps designed to accommodate.
There is also the question of Hollywood’s role in the collapse of the Democratic vote. That is probably delusional thinking, but there might have been a grain of humility — or at least of self-interested awareness — in the decision by wave after wave of Oscar-winning actors on Sunday not to use the podium to make political points. Looking back at the campaign of former US vice president Kamala Harris, which relied heavily on A-list Hollywood support, the conviction that celebrities swing votes or win hearts has never been less popular or assured. Some in the auditorium on Sunday might even still be in recovery from the failure of Time’s Up (remember that?), a dog’s breakfast of a movement in which Hollywood’s leading ladies leveraged their fame for an admirable cause that somehow ended up with actress Amy Schumer mugging for attention on the Capitol steps.
I feel for public figures in a way: damned if they do, damned if they do not. After Sunday night, the film industry looks craven and weak — on the other hand, as actor Ricky Gervais said when he hosted the Golden Globes in 2020: “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.” No one needs Brody’s thoughts on anything outside acting — and even that, let us face it, is a drag.
And yet, given the customary willingness of actors and directors to espouse political causes, the silence on Sunday has added to the clanging, baffling sense in the US of: where, exactly, is the dissent? Why are not people screaming? (US Vice President JD Vance and his family did have to be moved to a secret location while on a skiing holiday in Vermont last week, because of the numbers who came out to protest.)
Perhaps all the Ozempic in the room had made people light-headed. Perhaps the lack of politics was pregamed. Producers said ahead of the ceremony that the telecast would focus on the ways in which filmmaking requires “community and collaboration,” which sounds a bit like businessman Jeff Bezos’ commitment to “personal liberties” on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post. Only the actor Daryl Hannah, who managed to throw a V-sign and say: “Slava Ukraine!” to cheers from the crowd, failed to get the memo.
The takeaway is that, in Hollywood as elsewhere, people are scared, not only because Trump is petty and vindictive, but also because the vast uncertainty of the world we are suddenly in can make judicious silence seem more sensible than speeches. Where that tips into capitulation — and whether Hollywood, like the tech and media industries, would give us our era’s version of Leni Riefenstahl — remains to be seen.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist.
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