During a rather unprogressive Oscars — one of the less diverse in the past few years — we made up for some of it with sheer political greatness.
Before the 87th Annual Academy Awards, Reese Witherspoon took her appearance on the red carpet to promote #AskHerMore, a campaign on Twitter that demands reporters to ask more than “Who are you wearing?”
Witherspoon’s push for equality reminds viewers that female nominees are “more than just (their) dresses.”
The first joke of the night by our host, Neil Patrick Harris, made a direct hit on the fact that the 20 acting nominees for this year’s awards were all white.
Patricia Arquette, after winning Best Supporting Actress for “Boyhood,” made a rousing acceptance speech that demanded wage equality. Her fierce words got a rise out of Meryl Streep in addition to hoots and hollers from ?Jennifer Lopez.
Graham Moore accepted the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Imitation Game” and made a stunning reveal about his attempted suicide when he was 16 years old.
His speech included this golden phrase: “Stay weird, stay different, and then when it’s your turn and you are standing on this stage, please pass the message to the next person who comes along.”
The film honors a World War II hero, Alan Turing, who was persecuted by his own country for being gay.
Though the screenwriter had to correct assumptions about his sexuality — he’s actually straight, though many drew a connection between him and Turing — in an interview with BuzzFeed, Moore’s words on depression and being an outcast touched the hearts of those who feel “weird” and “different.”
John Legend and Common’s performance of “Glory” from the film “Selma” brought many to tears, including David Oyelowo, Oprah Winfrey, Chris Pine and, if I’m being completely honest, myself.
But Legend can do more than manipulate your tear ducts. In his acceptance speech for “Glory,” he criticized America’s incarceration rate and left the crowd speechless with the startling statistic that “there are more black men under correction control today that there were under slavery in 1850.”
The performance and speech were an altogether moving sequence, ringing truth to Legend’s words that “Selma is now, because the struggle for justice is now.”
The only shame is that one of the last moments of the show was the most offensive. After his co-presenter struggled with the simple task of opening an envelope, actor Sean Penn had the audacity to say “Who gave this son of a bitch a green card?” before announcing “Birdman” as Best Picture.
If you’ve misunderstood Penn’s failed attempt at a joke, he’s referring to the Mexican filmmaker of the movie who won the award for Best Director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Inarritu told Access Hollywood he wasn’t offended by Penn’s joke and that the two had been friends for 10 years.
But ‘friendly’ banter that involves racial implications isn’t appropriate to say on live national television. It was tasteless, whether or not the subject of said joke took it to heart.
Thankfully, the last speech of the night came from Inarritu, who dedicated the Oscar to his fellow Mexicans in hopes that “they can be treated with the same dignity and respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.”
Needless to say, it was a rather enlightened Oscars. Acceptance speeches are notorious for their legacies, as seen with Sally Fields’ “You like me” and Joe Pesci’s sweet, short “Thank you.”
We critique stars on the red carpet under a powerful magnifying glass with Facebook and Twitter. And our hosts are analyzed and compared with the one from the year prior.
Progress has been made when all these aspects of the show include forward thinking from our beloved participants. But that doesn’t excuse the blatant lack of diversity in the Academy’s nominee ?selections for 2015.
Actions speak louder than words, and we can’t just talk about equality like it’s magically going to happen.
Hopefully the Academy will listen to the outcry from these whistleblowers and stop pretending we don’t all know they’re selling us fool’s gold.
maehogan@indiana.edu
