The Patriot Post® · Hollywood's Boring 'Woke' Oscars
For everyone who missed it last night, Hollywood celebrated its 93rd Academy Awards. Given recent trends, “everyone who missed it” would be most folks. Nevertheless, it’s apparent that, for all its loudly declared concerns over “inclusivity,” Hollywood has failed to include the interests of the vast majority of the American public.
“Exclusivity” was a better word to describe yet another abysmally “woke” Oscars. As the New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski put it, “If you opened the window and listened closely Sunday night, you could hear it: the sound of millions of remote controls changing the channel during the 2021 Oscars.”
But it wasn’t just the over-the-top and yet somehow monotonous leftist messaging, which has turned so many Americans off of Hollywood and the Oscars. It was also the fact that, as USA Today’s Kelly Lawler observed, “The producers apparently forgot one of the key elements of filmmaking: Show, don’t tell.” In other words, it was a boring program arduously progressing through all the obligatory “woke” issues.
It has become increasingly apparent that Hollywood has severed itself from what made it so big in the first place: entertainment. It’s now little more than an institutional leftist shill, touting “diversity” and “inclusivity” but being completely devoid of genuine diversity of opinion and thought. It’s like an orchestra with a complete complement of musicians capable of playing an array of instruments, but that only ever plays one tune.
Of course, the Leftmedia praised the event as “innovative,” a humorous way to get around the fact that producers attempted to hold an in-person award ceremony while also social distancing due to California’s COVID restrictions. And it might have worked if it weren’t for the commitment to radical leftist virtue signals.
Last night’s hostess, actress Regina King, explained in her opening monolog how the show was being done in person with everyone “vaxxed, tested, retested, [and] socially distanced.” Then, just to keep the “systemic racism” narrative going, she added, “I have to be honest, if things had gone differently this week in Minneapolis, I would have traded in my heels for marching boots.”
On that same narrative, director Travon Free, who received the award for best live-action short, stated, “Today the police will kill three people and tomorrow the police will kill three people, and the day after that the police will kill three people. On average the police in America every day kill three people. Those people have been disproportionately black people. … I ask that you please not be indifferent. Please don’t be indifferent to our pain.” Never mind any of the reasons for those statistics…
Finally, why should any of us care what Hollywood is doing or who and what celebrities are honoring? It’s a fair question, as Hollywood has long dismissed and derided conservatives as a bunch of racist bigots who deserve nothing but ridicule. However, it’s important to observe what these cultural influencers are preaching, if only to be informed so as to be better prepared to confront and challenge their message when your neighbors or your kids parrot the same thing.
Update: The ratings are in, and they’re dismal — a 58% drop from last year. Even more striking, is that a decade ago, viewership was up around 40 million. Now? Just 9.8 million. Go woke go broke.