AS the drapes came down for the prestigious film event, the internet was still abuzz with the Oscars and its affair. In its 97th edition, the Academy Awards (Oscars) still upholds its place as a platform for creative expression, political statements and celebration of film making.
Despite its reputation for systemic racism and favouritism, the Oscars remains every movie maker and actor’s aspiration.
As such, the Sunday night event created multiple discourses online that celebrated the actors and questioned the fraternity’s integrity.
Cynthia Erivo–Ariana Grande performance
“The theatre kids won,” exclaimed fans on TikTok when Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande sang a medley of songs from The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz and Wicked.
Putting on a true theatrical show, from costumes to the performance itself, the minimalistic approach to the stage highlighted the gravitas of the duo’s voices and their significance in the movie.
Grande donned a ruby red haute couture Schiaparelli gown with a 3D trompe l’oeil vintage shoe detail at the back, a reference to the ruby red shoes in The Wizard of Oz.
Meanwhile, Erivo swapped her emerald green custom made Louis Vuitton red carpet gown for a floral-embellished white princes gown by Vivienne Westwood.
The set opened with Grande singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow from the original 1939 film The Wizard of Oz — she last sang it at her One Love Manchester benefit concert, in which she got emotional over the Manchester Arena bombing.
The stage was then followed by Erivo’s rendition of Home from the 1978 film The Wiz. The prima donnas then performed Defying Gravity from the latest film Wicked as a symbolic musical nod to constant exploration of the emerald world.
Erivo closed the performance with her iconic empathetic war cry that was flawless and almost a statement to the movie as well as its cast being snubbed at music and film award shows.
The very bare and intentional performance was made special with statement dresses and immaculate singing.
Emilia Perez controversy
Ever since the start of the awards season, Emilia Perez has been talk of the town and all for the wrong reasons. Having won multiple awards and breaking records, the movie is embroiled in controversy for being tone deaf — figuratively and literally.
The Spanish-language French musical crime-comedy film, directed by Jacques Audiard, follows a Mexican cartel leader. Since its release, the Mexican community have criticised the movie for capitalising on the country’s struggles as it lacks cultural sensitivity and context.
Emilia Perez was also condemned for winning over Wicked, especially in the music category — as the latter was a virtuoso musical.
Acknowledging the growing criticism over the movie, Zoe Saldana apologised after winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress when a journalist told her the film had been “hurtful” for Mexicans.
“I am very, very sorry that you and so many Mexicans felt offended. That was never our intention,” said Saldana, adding that she is open for dialogues on how the movie could have been better.
Her apology was deemed dismissive and netizens shifted to ridicule the awful, off-key “song speech” by Emilia Perez’s songwriter Camille Dalmais, who also sang Ratatouille’s soundtrack Le Festin.
The many wins of Emilia Perez may have been the film fratenity’s backfired attempt at being inclusive. Awarding a film that is technically inferior to its counterparts is the picture-book example of being performative. The “inclusivity” of Emilia Perez was not without its controversies — perhaps, award shows should be more socially aware when screening their winners.
Snubs and first wins
A half circus and half Broadway show, the Oscars’s main discourse was — obviously — snubs and wins.
Following Timothee Chalamet’s realistic speech about wanting to be one of the greats after winning Best Actor in a Leading Role at the Screen Actors Guild Awards for his portayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, many rooted for the young actor to win an Oscar too.
Instead the Oscar for Best Actor went to Adrien Brody for his role in The Brutalist, which was met with disdain as netizens chimed in that it should have gone to Chalamet or Sebastian Stan who played a convincing Donald Trump in the movie The Apprentice.
This created a discourse over authenticity in the film industry as filmmakers of The Brutalist resorted to using artificial intelligence (AI) because Brody could not get the Hungarian accent right for the movie.
Many shared concerns that using AI in movie making takes away the humanity aspect in film — other than that, the actor was also ridiculed for giving a very lengthy speech after winning the award.
In the Wicked-Emilia Perez conflict, netizens cried foul as Wicked experienced another set of snubs in which Grande lost the Oscar for
Best Supporting Actress to Saldana. The award was the American–Dominican actress’s first Academy Award.
A much welcomed win, Wicked picked up the Oscar for Best Costume Design, making the movie’s costume designer Paul Tazewell the first Black man to win the statuette.
Feline-centric animation Flow became the first Latvian film to have won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and Brazil also got its first win for Best International Feature, I’m Still Here.
The Gaza-Israel conflict documentary No Other Land took home an Oscar for Best Documentary. The directors, Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, addressed the conflict, called for ceasefire and challenged the fraternity for its dystopian facade.
All in all, the night was a reflection of Hollywood’s ever-evolving identity — a place of artistry, activism and, inevitably, contradiction of its ethos.
