Awards won’t be remembered for anti-Trump protests
WELL, that wasn’t in the script, was it?
It had been widely predicted the 89th Academy Awards would knock the socks off every other previous event. A political rally that would have people talking for years; an Oscars for the ages.
Well, they certainly managed that. But not for the reasons they were expecting.
Instead, Oscars 2017 will go down in history as the one with the biggest mistake.
When Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway stood up to announce this year’s gong for Best Picture, everything seemed to go according to plan.
But then, in a blunder even bigger than the urban myth which insists that Marisa Tomei was only given her Best Supporting Actress award for ‘My Cousin Vinny’ in 1993 by mistake, Beatty awarded Best Picture to ‘La La Land’, Hollywood’s love letter to itself.
It certainly made sense – the musical was expected to clean up in every category it had been nominated in, and it went on to win six awards.
But the sight of an increasingly baffled Beatty and Dunaway being stuck in a commotion on stage when the producer of ‘La La Land’ realised, from the cards, that his movie hadn’t won before announcing that ‘Moonlight’ was the actual recipient, was another reminder that no matter how hard you try to get something right, something can always go wrong.
The presenters, producers and casts milled around the stage, each one more unsure than the other. It was a moment of spontaneous confusion which actually made this usually soulless event seem a little bit more relatable, although a betting man probably wouldn’t take odds on the bean counters from PriceWaterhouseCoopers being around to keep an eye on proceedings next year.
The event had promised so much more than simple human error, however.
The ante has been upped on a daily basis by celebrities and nominees declaring their undying devotion to slaying the dragon that is The Donald. This was perhaps best summed up by Jodie Foster over the weekend, when she addressed an anti-Trump rally and declared: “Whether you’re white, black or brown and all the colours of the identity rainbow – this is our time to resist!”
Of course, the fact that so many people voted for Mr Trump precisely because they were sick of hearing about the ‘identity rainbow’ seemed to matter not a jot.
Hollywood, by its very nature, is an industry which relies on lies and deflections, and all the preevent hype about how anti-Trump Sunday night was going to be was also a neat side-step. After all, last year’s event was dominated by the #oscarssowhite hashtag, and the previous year had seen an anti-gun theme rather ruined by the fact that the stars all had armed bodyguards.
So what better way to drag attention away from problems in your own industry than to pick on the world’s easiest and most deserving target?
Host Jimmy Kimmel probably had the best gags, live tweeting Trump during the show, boasting that the event is aired to “225 countries that now hate us”, making a few self-deprecating jabs at Hollywood’s expense. Funnily enough, his best throwaway quip, “‘Dr Strange’ was nominated for Outstanding Visual Effects and was also named Secretary for Housing and Urban Development” would in, other circumstances, have opened the host up to accusations of his own racism – after all, Dr Ben Carson, the HUD secretary, is black.
Like so many of the movies they produce, this year’s Academy Awards promised much, but ultimately failed to deliver.
After all, there had been brawls on the streets outside the Kodak theatre between Trump fans – one of whom seemed to base her entire objection to the event on the basis that “Madonna dances around with nothing on” – and anti-Trump protesters.
Would that such energy had been repeated inside – the sight of a Trump-supporting James Woods launching himself at the host would have been a pleasant change of pace for this strangely subdued affair.
While many of the actors, including Ruth Negga, wore a blue ribbon to highlight the ACLU, and Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi won praise from the Iranian government for boycotting the event, this simply wasn’t the moment of mass actorly mobilisation we had been promised.
My God – the Brit Awards had more searing anti-Trump commentary than Sunday night’s snoozeathon. Of course, there were the usual generic platitudes.
Beatty was quick to spout about “the diversity in our community”. Some Italian dude who won for Best Make Up dedicated his award to “all the immigrants”, which was nice.
Gael Garcia Bernal said that he is “against any form of wall that wants to separate us”, which received plenty of applause from the packed room – none of whom live in gated communities, of course.
WHAT made this year’s Oscars so interesting was that it was a sign of an industry ill at ease with itself.
The bluster and bombast in the run-up to the event had promised it was going to be one long night of charged, subversive speeches, like a scene from the world’s best-dressed political rally, simply failed to play out.
There were no Streepian outbursts of supreme condescension. No Michael Moore moments. Nobody burned an American flag or called for Trump’s head on a plate. It was just a room of luvvies muttering darkly into their ‘Oscar-exclusive’ Piper-Heidsieck Champagne and their 100-grand goodie bags. Oh well. There’s always next year...