Donald Trump is president, Beyoncé is pregnant with twins and, now, the Oscars might be cancelled? Tinsel Town is having a rollercoaster year.
Although most celebrities are firmly against the president’s recent immigration ban, entertainment reporters are in disagreement over how Hollywood should collectively protest. Some, like one Vox critic, are even advocating for the cancellation of the biggest awards event of the year.
“Speeches ultimately don’t risk all that much, because the people delivering them are speaking to a room full of mostly friendly, well-off liberals,” Vox critic Todd VanDerWerff wrote, commenting on the increasingly political tenor of Hollywood awards events. “Canceling the [Oscars] ceremony altogether would be a bolder and more appropriate act of protest.”
Variety critic Owen Gleiberman didn’t go quite as far. Gleiberman believed it “okay” for Hollywood to get political, even though, he said, that very politicization helped elect President Trump.
“The perception — right or wrong — that people in the entertainment industry are standing on a pedestal telling the rest of us what to think has become part of the problem, not the solution,” he explained. Yet, in his opinion, artists have a bully pulpit for empathy and truth, and the stakes are too high not to use it.
Washington Post writer Alyssa Rosenberg listed specific ways by which Hollywood could protest Trump at the Oscars. Instead of airing their personal feelings about the new administration, Rosenberg recommended that entertainers talk about policies or norms that inspired their art.
Additionally, she suggested that the ceremony give Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi time to speak by phone or video, since he is no longer allowed in the United States. Although there was talk that Farhadi might be granted an exception to return to the U.S. for the ceremony, he clarified that, even then, he would refuse to attend.
