The ceremony of the Academy Awards has been a controversial event throughout its history, beginning with the years of the Great Depression. The Trump presidency has added gasoline to the fire. From the protest of Marlon Brando for the treatment of American Indians, to that of Jane Fonda for the Vietnam War or the controversy surrounding the Lifetime Achievement Award to Elia Kazan, the Oscars has always been a political story. The incendiary presidency of Republican Donald Trump has only emboldened more to a liberal bastion such as Hollywood, which in recent years has also turned to the recognition of the cinema of a country with which the president is especially focused: Mexico. The lack of love is mutual: last year, annoyed with criticism of their policies, he scoffed at the bad audience data of the ceremony. “The Oscar with the smallest audience in HISTORY The problem is that we no longer have stars, except your president (kidding, of course),” he wrote in his Twitter account. It is no joke that for that same evening of the previous year, Donald Trump had just arrived at the White House, Trump tried to counterprogram the ceremony by calling a big party at the presidential residence.
Last year, at the moment Common and Andra Day performed one of the Oscar-nominated songs, a rosary of activists, including Spanish chef José Andrés, carried a Puerto Rican flag; Tarana Burke, from MeToo against bullying, and Patrice Cullors, from the African-American protest movement Black Lives Matters. All with something in common, the opposition to Trump. Film historian Jonathan Kuntz, a professor at UCLA, noted that these have not been, however, the most controversial ceremonies anywhere near those of the past. “Perhaps some of the most serious politics that have ever been displayed were those of the early 30s [shortly after the birth of the gala], during the Great Depression, when there were many people in the industry in Hollywood, actors, directors and writers. They wanted to boycott the Academy Awards because they considered the producers, who controlled the academy, were cutting their salaries unfairly, “he explains by telephone.
In 2016, when for the second year in a row there was not a single African-American performer nominated, there was a call to boycott the Academy Awards by stars like Spike Lee. The racial trauma accompanies the history of prizes born almost a century ago, when there were blacks who had been born slaves and the laws of segregation prevailed. The protest has not only come from the hand of African-Americans. The absence of Marlon Brando in the collection of his Oscar for best actor in 1973 for The Godfather is in the top ten of the political moments of Hollywood, he gave honor to a forever famous American Indian who introduced himself as Sacheen Littlefeather. He also denounced the bad treatment of American Indians in the cinema.
According to some experts including, Claudia Puig, of the Los Angeles Critics Association, the cinema, also carries a deep political burden with the prizes. Did the prizes to Coco or to the Form of the Water signify something also of political declaration? “Some prizes have more than a dose of politics. Coco was the best animated film of last year, but rewarding a film that celebrated Mexican culture and traditions at a time when the president slandered the immigrants from that country was something the Academy also wanted to do.” Puig explained by email.
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