This year’s Academy Awards broadcast attempted to walk a fine line to avoid annoying viewers by steering clear of politics and controversy as much as possible. Donald Trump was not mentioned, for instance, and even the winners who won their Oscars for a transgender movie did not use the word transgender on the stage.
Unlike past Oscars broadcasts, Trump was not the constant target of attack by either the host, Conan O’Brien, or the winners who appeared on stage to give their acceptance speeches, Variety noted.
O’Brien did deliver one oblique reference to Trump and the current political climate with a side reference to the film Anora — which follows the life of a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. After the film had won two categories, O’Brien joked, “Two wins already, I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.” That was an obvious reference to Donald Trump and his reactions to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Putin’s war with Ukraine and its dictator Volodymyr Zelensky.
That was the only time that anything remotely concerning Trump was delivered from the Awards stage on Sunday. Indeed, the broadcast seemed to go out of its way to avoid too much controversy. And to put a fine point on that, the speeches from the winners of the transgender film, Emilia Pérez, didn’t even utter the word transgender on stage.
That is not to say that no political comment or theme rang out from the podium on Sunday, though. Several winners did deliver comments that approached politics, but generally not U.S. politics.
During his acceptance for best actor for The Brutalist, for instance, star Adrien Brody noted that he has now won two Oscars for portraying a Holocaust Victim and noted, “I’m here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression, and of antisemitism and racism and othering.” He then added that he prays for a “healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world.”
Daryl Hannah indulged her support for Ukraine by saying “Slava Ukraini” from the stage as she performed her duties as a presenter. And the winners for the pro-Palestinian documentary, No Other Land, also made several political statements in support of the Hamas-led Palestinians.
But the move to avoid vexing political proclamations from the stage may be more evidence that Hollywood is just beginning to realize that Americans have had enough of the film industry’s left-wing finger wagging and wild-eyed anti-Trumpism. It is likely also proof that the Academy is hoping to put an end to the cratering ratings its Awards broadcast has been suffering for the better part of a decade. Last year’s show, for instance was the fourth lowest-rated show in Oscar history and it was rife with left-wing rants. That Academy clearly hopes to staunch that bleeding.
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