The Imitation Night

It’s been almost a week since the 87th Academy Awards now. Every single acceptance speech has been carefully analyzed and strongly criticized and hateful attacks and heartfelt defences have been written for everyone that played even a minor role in this controversial party. It is true that this might have been the ceremony that covered more advocacy-worthy topics ever: gender, race, immigration, sexual orientation, human rights. Other important issues were also discussed or briefly mentioned: disability, suicide, aging, internet privacy, democracy.

Yet I can’t help feeling that — other than a few broken friendships — we’ve accomplished nothing by sitting in front of the TV, bragging on Twitter with our ever so loved hashtag activism. Sure, we got the spotlight on some extremely important issues, but even that was flawed when you realize that when multiple things get the spotlight at once, in the end, nothing shined bright. Thinking about hashtags only, we had #AskHerMore and #OscarsSoWhite splitting the great media attention (and of course, the thousands of red carpet and awards related ones, but we’re sticking to the activism ones here). As for acceptance speeches, we had Patricia Arquette demanding gender equality, Alexandro G. Iñárritu dedicating his award to his fellow Mexicans, Common and John Legend reminding us that the US is the #1 incarcerated country in the world, and Graham Moore asking everyone who’s ever felt weird to stay different, just to mention the most popular ones.

Now, going back to 2014, we had very similar things happening with the acceptance speeches. Cate Blanchett was the one calling out the Hollywood sexism and demanding more movies centred on strong leading females, Lupita Nyong’o assuring every child that their dreams can come true no matter where they’re from, Steve McQueen reminding us that 21 million people still suffer slavery today, and Jared Leto standing in front of the world for everyone who have ever felt injustice because of who they are or who they love. If the themes all sound a little too similar, let’s take a look at the jokes. Most of the internet praised Neil Patrick Harris for his great joke at the beginning of the night about the Oscars whiteness. His exact line was: “Tonight we honour Hollywood’s best and whitest! (pause) Sorry, brightest!”. Now shall we take a look at Ellen DeGeneres’ joke of her opening monologue from last year’s Awards? Coincidentally at the time the internet also acclaimed this as one of the best jokes of the night: “Possibility number one: 12 Years a Slave could win. Possibility number two: you’re all racists! (pause) Now please welcome our first white presenter!”. I don’t know about you, but I definitely see a pattern here.

I’m definitely not saying that we shouldn’t be discussing these themes or that having actors, actresses and directors advocating for these issues isn’t better than doing nothing at all, but, as we can see from last year, nothing changed with our hashtag activism. Or, in a glass half-empty view of the situation, things actually got worse, as last year we had people of colour better represented in the main categories, with Lupita Nyong’o winning the Best Supporting Actress Award and Steve McQueen receiving the Oscar for Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave. This year, they not only ignored Ava DuVernay for Best Director, but also didn’t nominate David Oyelowo for Best Actor. As for Cate Blanchett’s 2014 plea for more good movies with strong leading females? With the exception of Felicity Jones and The Theory of Everything, none of the films featuring Best Actresses nominees were nominated for Best Picture. Last year, three of the five Best Actresses nominees starred in films nominated for Best Picture.

The problem with all of these speeches and all of the Twitter hashtags and Facebook likes and shares and blog texts just like this one I’m writing right now is that they are not concrete action. They give us the sensation that we’re doing something, that we’re raising awareness, that we are contributing to change an uncomfortable situation and we pat ourselves on the back and congratulate each act of bravery and courage for “saying what the world needs to hear”, but in reality we’re doing nothing. In reality, without concrete action no matter how much attention the situation gets — gosh, it could be adorned with glitter glue and rainbow pompons –, it still won’t change. And I have grown and keep growing more and more frustrated each and every day by the fact that I still have no clue on how to act. I’ve come to this point where monthly donations to a charity don’t feel meaningful and just offering my time a few times a year to a variety of causes just doesn’t seem helpful at all. So maybe you may want to join me in thinking about concrete actions, projects, things we can actually do with the little time we have to start a real revolution — not just an imaginary one.