<\/p>\n
\n\tOK, so it\u2019s not like ICE and Iran made\u00a0zero\u00a0appearances Sunday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A documentary winner called out \u201ca government murder[ing] people on the streets of our major cities,\u201d the international<\/a> Oscar winner noted that \u201call adults are responsible for all children and let\u2019s not vote for politicians who don\u2019t take this seriously\u201d and Javier Bardem said \u201cno to all war.\u201d<\/p>\n But these were mostly lesser-knowns or, in Bardem\u2019s case, an international figure, making mostly telegraphed or vague comments. The dozens of American Hollywood personalities who took the podium to open an envelope or accept its bounty mainly just said no to all commentary.<\/p>\n Turn on the show oblivious to current events and you\u2019d never have guessed the U.S. just launched a war whose heat ratchets up by the day. You\u2019d never suspect government agents have been snatching Americans on the streets for months. If that happened, surely we\u2019d hear a passionate deriding of a foreign regime, or a broadside against U.S. government policy, or \u2026 something. Not nothing.<\/p>\n One late-night host did flex the muscle. Jimmy Kimmel sidestepped these two major issues but mocked the vanity of a docu-chasing White House and censoring ways of a TV mogul. He was on a lonely island. And not the good Andy Samberg kind.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not like Conan O\u2019Brien didn\u2019t give the room the opportunity; hell, he practically invited them to drop some Bad Bunny beats.\u00a0\u201cI should warn you, tonight things could get political. So there\u2019s an alternate Oscars<\/a> hosted by Kid Rock at the Dave and Busters down the street,\u201d O\u2019Brien riffed in his opening. But no electric poles were climbed. If God\u2019s blessing was given to Latin America, we didn\u2019t hear it.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cConan gave them license to do it and they didn\u2019t take it, and I found that very disappointing,\u201d says the German-born, New York-dwelling writer Daniel Kehlmann, who last year came out with a well-regarded historical novel<\/a>, The Director, about filmmakers and totalitarianism and also just published a New York Times opinion piece <\/a>about the social value of award-speech advocacy. \u201cThe whole thing to me felt small, as if there was some psychological wish to pretend this was not a big show but a small community and it doesn\u2019t matter what they\u2019re doing. But it\u2019s not a small thing. It\u2019s a big thing with reach around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI mean, It\u2019s not like the night\u2019s major award winner<\/a> has anything to say about nativism and white nationalism and purging the country of immigrants \u2014 oh wait.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not like the room everyone was gathered in was being threatened<\/a> as a result of the Iran war \u2014 oh wait.<\/p>\n \n\tAgree with him or not \u2014 and his line about how the war was \u201cradicalizing the regime\u201d in Iran was\u2026a little hard to parse \u2014 but at least Bardem\u00a0tried\u00a0to say something, telling<\/a> THR\u2019s Tiffany Taylor on the red carpet how he saw in the war in Iran a repeat of the war in Iraq.\u00a0<\/p>\n Couldn\u2019t somebody have made a more coherent claim against the war from the podium? Couldn\u2019t someone maybe have talked about the repression of the leaders of Iran on the other hand?\u00a0I mean, Jafar Panahi was\u00a0right there.\u00a0The husband-and-wife filmmakers <\/a>behind the Iranian doc short\u00a0Cutting Through Rocks,\u00a0who had faced their own tribulations<\/a>, were right there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet none of the winners could be bothered to say anything with the microphone those nominees only wish they had. None of the cushy speakers could even be bothered to salute them for bravely making the movies they did lest it cause some minor career blowback. \u201cI gave up Christ for you and you couldn\u2019t give up the Mets?\u201d<\/p>\n Hen Mazzig, the pro-Israel influencer who has been vocal politics at award ceremonies, sent me this thought shortly after the show. \u201cAs celebrities, who live a luxurious life that only most people can dream of, made catchy statements for peace and ceasefires, they did not utter a single word about the tens of thousands who were murdered by the regime in Iran over the past few months. Not even about the schoolgirls killed by a mistaken American attack two weeks ago, or the hundreds of girls who were poisoned and murdered in the last 47 years by this oppressive regime.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI get it. Iran doesn\u2019t lend itself to easy soundbites. You don\u2019t want to appear to be supporting a war and you don\u2019t want to be seen as supporting a brutal regime. (Well, most people don\u2019t.) If only there was a place where we might find people who could sell a complex message, a place where the world\u2019s greatest communicators and performers could be found.<\/p>\n I also get it on the fool-me-once front. Stars have been told to shut up and sing since the George W. Bush days, and when they didn\u2019t listen during the first Trump administration they got social movements and Biden \u2014 and then it all boomeranged back to Trump anyway. Since then celebrities have been increasingly told that they shouldn\u2019t weigh in on politics \u2014 mainly by publicists worried about the ratio. The right has laid down a brilliant trap to movie stars \u2014 make comments and you feed into their narrative and make yourself an easy target for the stay-out-of-politics lines (from infotainment anchors waiting for the call to join the Cabinet at any moment).\u00a0<\/p>\n The problem is that saying nothing also helps their cause \u2014 makes you seem irrelevant by your timidity. Talking about the beauty of cinema and the collaboration of co-stars while wars rage at home and abroad has the effect of making you look out of touch. You don\u2019t get slammed on Fox News. You get something worse \u2014 not talked about at all.<\/p>\n In such an environment one might have just imagined going for it \u2014 pithily knocking ICE or nuancedly characterizing Iran. Not just a boring, vaguely complicit silence.<\/p>\n \n\tYou might think that silence would have little effect on the real world. Kehlmann vocally disagrees. \n\tThat effect could apply, he says, even in America. \u201cThe screws always get more tightened when you\u2019re quiet. This year at least people could speak out at the Oscars. But next year you might get bleeped for saying anything political. And the year after you have to say something pro-government or you\u2019re not eligible for an award. I hope it doesn\u2019t go that way, of course,\u201d Kehlmann adds. \u201cBut they\u2019ll always take away freedom if you let them. If you resist they often won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLook at PTA. You have to love the guy. He makes movies with gusto and tackles issues with flair. And OK, maybe he didn\u2019t want to mar his first Oscar speech after a 30-year wait with talk about ICE. But then he gave another speech. And another. When he got up for best picture and said he forgot something essential in \u00a0his speech for best director, I thought, finally. Finally, we\u2019re going to get the shout-out to what\u2019s happening on the streets of this country that we\u2019ve been waiting for all season. But then he just said he forgot to thank his cast.<\/p>\n Dude, I\u2019m going to assume at this point the cast knows they\u2019re appreciated. If they don\u2019t, that\u2019s a bigger problem. But you know who doesn\u2019t know and might like to hear some appreciation? The people on the front lines fighting the kind of Steven Lockjaw nativism you so elegantly skewered in your film. They could have really used that shout-out from that big megaphone you had. You know who else could have used the shout-out? The people watching from the \u201c31 countries across six continents [that] are represented this evening,\u201d as Conan noted, who might want to hear we\u2019re not, as a culture, about rounding up people because of their last name or skin color. Instead they heard how you love actors.<\/p>\n Oscar season began in a record-breaking month for ICE deportation<\/a>s and its nominations were announced the weekend Alex Pretti was killed by ICE. The justifiable fury over that incident was probably\u00a0one of the reasons One Battle won in the first place. And yet, nothing from any of the movie\u2019s winners.<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s telling that the winner who could have made the biggest political statement, Sean Penn, wasn\u2019t there. Penn won for playing the kind of political figure we don\u2019t want to become, and wasn\u2019t present to drive the point home. Yet his absence from the show, apparently to visit President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine<\/a>, could still have been a beautiful opportunity to shine a light back on a crisis that has become all too forgotten. Instead no one explained anything, the opportunity was botched, and it left us with nothing but presenter Kieran Culkin making a boneheaded comment that sounded like Penn thought he was too good for the show.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most pointed comment of the night came from Will Arnett, who took aim at another threat hovering over the room.\u00a0\u201cTonight we\u2019re celebrating people, not AI,\u201d he said, citing animation as \u201can art form [that]\u2026needs to be protected.\u201d\u00a0Given the composition of the audience, that perhaps wasn\u2019t the boldest stance. But given the way Big Tech increasingly\u00a0owns Washington \u2014 and given the way it owns the people who employ the winners \u2014 it was hardly a safe comment either. Arnett was putting his rep on the line to ensure that there will still be people to honor at the Oscars.\u00a0<\/p>\n But maybe he should stop fighting so hard. We\u2019re all worried about an industry\/society that is fast becoming too automated. But on the awards<\/a>-speech score, could an AI avatar and its prompters really have done worse? After all, a synthetic performer trained on the Oscar-acceptance remarks might have at least had a hallucination. At this rate, that might be the only way we conjure up some courage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThe Oscars are not an internal American thing. It\u2019s really a signal that goes out to the whole world,\u201d he says. \u201cIf people watching in Turkey and China and Russia and other non-democracies see that Americans are speaking out, they believe they can too. And if they see they\u2019re not, they think \u2018well, America doesn\u2019t have democracy anymore, so why should we?\u2019 \u2018People can get rounded up on the streets and no one will care.\u2019 It really has a profound effect. On authoritarian governments too.\u201d<\/p>\n