This year’s Oscars, like every year, had their ups and downs. Some good things, some bad things, some laughter, some crying, so many inspirational speeches and hilarious quotes. So here are some of the things that were totally perfect and some things that totally panned.
What went right: Patricia Arquette’s speech.
Patricia Arquette’s acceptance speech was wonderful. A huge run-on sentence, but she was excited. Though we seriously think she should have seen this Oscar coming. I mean, you can’t have that amount of talent and not know. But anyhow, her speech was inspiring and empowering. And that final call to arms to women to seize what we want, to go for gender equality and to empower themselves in striving for equal wages? Brilliant. Few actors or actresses manage to fit something so motivational and radical into their speeches and we respect Patricia for using her time on someone else. If it can get Maryl Streep and J Lo out of their chairs, cheering and whooping and supporting her, then it’s got to be some great stuff. Let’s go and smash that glass ceiling once and for all, with Patricia Arquette as our leader!
What went wrong: the internet’s reaction to it.
And then the internet exploded. At first in the good sense. A cry of support from here, a hashtag there, generally everyone really happy at how selflessly Patricia Arquette was acting when she used her platform to promote gender equality. But then it exploded in the bad sense. Thousands of trolls seemed to rub their hands together, realizing they had found a new way of annoying the hell out of people, before they hijacked the conversation. Instantly it became about how “real” the wage gap actually is, who works more hours and whether Patricia Arquette was being a hypocrite. All the good vibes and selflessness she promoted were choked out by the seemingly neverending supply of sexism Twitter has to offer. And then they pretended to be shocked when people were upset by their derailing.
What went right: #AskHerMore.
Almost like in a preemptive effort to redeem Twitter’s good name, some of the reasonable human beings on there took it upon themselves to discourage and call out red carpet sexism. Every single year at every single event, the men are asked about their family lives, their role in big films, whether they are disappointed at the lack of a nomination and who they think is going to win. You know, the sort of things that you would ask famous, successful people. And every single year at every single event, the women are asked what they’re wearing, their dresses are revealed before their faces are and they’re basically treated like your little cousin’s latest barbie doll. The hashtag #AskHerMore encouraged interviewers and presenters to go beyond that, to show a little less sexism and to show little girls everywhere that there was more to being a woman than a dress and a piece of jewellery.
What went wrong: the lack of a response.
Apart from “The Daily Share”, there wasn’t really that much involvement, though. “The Daily Share” really went for it, asking for Twitter users to suggest questions to ask the celebs and actually asking them important, meaningful questions. But pretty much every other news channel stuck to their usual rota of asking about dresses, makeup, hair and jewellery. The actresses were still encouraged to show off their clothes for the camera and the rest of the world tried to carry on as usual. Which was a bit disappointing, really. It would have been great to see some major news channels taking over the red carpet with some serious questions about sexism, life and acting as a career. Apparently we’re not advanced enough as a society for that yet, though! It was kind of awkward to see the shock on some actresses’ faces when they were asked, too. It was like “Wait? You want to know about me instead of my shoes? When did this happen?” The guys had obviously prepared a few answers in advance, but the women were less prepared and almost confused at being treated like human beings. This is why we need feminism.
What went right: “Selma”’s nomination.
“Selma” was definitely one of the best films of this entire year. It was very topical, considering the continuing fight of African Americans for equality, as well as the rising fights of many other marginalized groups for recognition and the equality and respect they deserve. Not only that, but the cast was amazing, the acting was divine and it was produced, financed and loved by Oprah Winfrey. Their insights into its creation and meaning were wonderful.
What went wrong: the whiteness of the winners.
A shame it hardly won anything, though. I mean, seriously? Just an award for the music? If that isn’t an illustration of how marginalized African Americans and other people of color are, I don’t know what is. To boot, pretty much all the winners were the whitest shade imaginable. I’m not saying they weren’t good and I do think the actors and actresses, directors and composers involved were all very talented. But I absolutely, totally, one hundred percent refuse to believe that people of color are so less disposed to talent that two Mexican directors winning in a row is a joke and not normal. Come on, Hollywood! Though at least the Best Actor and Best Actress were both redheads, which counts for something, right?
What went right: “Boyhood” and “American Sniper” getting nominated.
“Boyhood” was a brilliant film from its conceptualization. Based on a novel, the directors chose to film it slowly, over twelve years in fact, recording the same actors and actresses as they aged and matured into their characters. It started without a script and slowly matured with the cast and writers into something beautiful. It isn’t quite like anything we’ve ever seen before in film and we loved it.
“American Sniper” was a semi-documentary based on the autobiography with the same name. It follows the life of a Navy sniper, from early childhood, to his first kill, to his tours, the breakdown of his family life and his death. It is a moving, raw, real picture and the highest grossing war film in the history of ever.
So we were naturally thrilled at the sheer number of nominations both of them received. They were deserving of some solid recognition and awards.
What went wrong: they didn’t win enough!
What none of us guessed was that they weren’t really going to win all that much. Instead, they got a couple of awards here and there, but were ultimately overshadowed by “Birdman”, “The Theory of Everything” and “Still Alice”. Now, these were good films. But I can’t help but wonder whether their sheer number of wins was more based on the popularity of the subject than on the actual technical work that went into them. “Boyhood” and “American Sniper” win on terms of effort, time invested, quality of the result and general appeal, surely?
We were very disappointed at how few wins these films collected.
What went right: disability representation!
It isn’t often that disability is represented in film. And when it is we often see tired old clichés being used and abused. The senile old man, the psychopathic serial killer, the frail girl with brittle bone disease, etc. It’s rarely anything creative, believable or realistic. Which, considering one in four Americans has a mental illness and almost all of us will at some point suffer physical degradation or disability, is a little odd. We get these weird notions and ideas about disability from rubbish films and we don’t really understand or think about real people with real disabilities all that often.
So it was very refreshing to see the realistic, believable portrayals of Lou Gherig’s Disease and early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. And especially refreshing to see this realism lauded and awarded with two Best Acting prizes! It’s the sort of recognition and attention that good portrayals of disability deserve.
What went wrong: disabled actors still overlooked.
The only downside is that both of the actors were perfectly sound in body and mind. Which obviously adds further credit to their great acting, after all, it isn’t easy to realistically, respectfully and interestingly portray someone who is disabled when you are not. But it also drew our attention to the near-lack of disabled people in Hollywood, and how rarely even these few are recognized and awarded for their work. Many people may say that acting, directing or composing is made difficult by disability, which is true. But the fact that in an age where we have the paralympics and many representations of disability on screen, we are incapable of bringing to the front a single excellent disabled actor or actress is more a sign of our prejudices than anything else. After all, what is more likely? That disabled people suck at everything to do with Hollywood, or that our awards ceremonies are kinda ablist?
So that’s our rundown of what went right and what went wrong at the Oscars this year! We look forward to, hopefully, some improvements next year! What did or didn’t you like about the Oscars?