IT WAS a throwaway quip, delivered deep in the ceremony’s long flabby middle, just before the award for Best Original Score. “‘Anora’ is doing well tonight,” observed the host of the Oscars, Conan O’Brien (pictured below). “I guess Americans are excited to see someone finally stand up to a powerful Russian.” Mr O’Brien often gives his jokes a second wind by mugging after he tells them. This time he moved on quickly. So did the show.
Things were different the last time Donald Trump took office. In 2017 Jimmy Kimmel, the host, needled Mr Trump mercilessly, mocking his cabinet members, daughter, policies and addiction to X (then still called Twitter). Stars wore blue ribbons in support of the American Civil Liberties Union, a watchdog group fighting Mr Trump’s nascent agenda. Gael García Bernal, a Mexican actor, declared himself “against any form of wall that wants to separate us” (Mr Trump had campaigned on building a southern-border wall that Mexico would pay for).
Though 2017 may have been unusually raw, stars have long used the Oscars to make political statements. Winners have used their speeches to protest against America’s wars in Vietnam and Iraq and express support for immigrants and climate-change legislation. In the early 1990s actors wore red ribbons to support people with AIDS.
The gruel was thinner this year. Bill Kramer, boss of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organises the Oscars, had said he “absolutely” wanted the show to steer clear of politics. The stars obliged. “Emilia Pérez”, a musical about a Mexican cartel boss who undergoes a sex-change operation to become a woman, led the field with 13 nominations; it took home just two awards, for Best Original Song and Best Supporting Actress, won by Zoe Saldaña. She acknowledged her immigrant background, but said nothing about the current administration. “The Apprentice”, a film critical of Mr Trump that had struggled to find a distributor in America for fear of retribution from the (then former) president, had been nominated for two awards but won none.
A handful of winners made oblique references to “the chaos we’re living through” (the orchestra swiftly played her off the stage) and the importance of “not letting hate go unchecked”. But even the two charming Iranians who took the stage to claim their statues for Best Animated Short Film were gracious and anodyne. The Palestinians and Israelis who made “No Other Land”, about Israel seizing land in a West Bank community, politely disagreed with American and Israeli policy, but that should be expected from makers of a political documentary.
The night’s most sustained applause came not in response to a political statement, as was common eight years ago, but to a red-meat defence of seeing film in theatres offered by Sean Baker, who made “Anora” and took home Oscars including Best Picture, Director and Original Screenplay. Mikey Madison (pictured above), the film’s 25-year-old lead, deservedly won Best Actress.
The awards in 2017 presaged an era of socially conscious film-making. This year’s awards seem to herald something more akin to the shift that greeted Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy 45 years ago. American voters made their views clear at the ballot box: Reagan won 44 states in 1980 and 49 in 1984. Studios obliged. The critical, conspiratorial films of the 1970s such as “Chinatown”, “The Conversation”, “The Deer Hunter” and “Three Days of the Condor” gave way to the uncomplicated patriotism of “Rambo” and “Top Gun”.
This time there may be something darker at work: fear. One veteran media executive predicts: “The enormity of hostility that Hollywood evinced toward Trump and Trumpism from 2016 to 2020 and 2020 to 2024: will that be mitigated because people perceive their business interests are at stake? Absolutely. You can intimidate people who have responsibilities and shareholders.”
Nobody wants to be audited, or see their merger get scuppered. Some stories will simply not get told. As one longtime producer mused, “If someone came to me with a personal story about an American family that came here 35 years ago from Venezuela, and the mother…won’t answer the door any more because she thinks Trump will send her home…that’s an interesting story to me. But I wouldn’t go near it, because nobody will make it.” ■
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