Suicide, women and race: the Oscars gets political

Who would have thought that by nominating an all-white club of actors and actresses for its biggest awards, and failing to name any women in the fields of directing, or writing, that the Academy, rather than celebrating the best and whitest (to quote the show’s host, Neil Patrick Harris) might have unleashed a circus of political speechifying second to none in Oscars history?

Race.  Immigration.  Women’s rights.  Teenage suicide.  Sexual discrimination.  Alzheimer’s.  ALS.  OMG.  It really happened.

Here’s a quick guide to the key moments:

1. Meryl Streep punches the air whooping in support of Patricia Arquette, as she accepts her best supporting gong for Boyhood.  Patricia donned glasses and read from her notes – demanding wage equality and women’s rights.
2. Glory: First there was the emotional performance of the best original song nomination that had actors David Oyelowo and Chris Pine in tears, as the choir marched from a backdrop designed to resemble the bridge in Selma, but invoked the protests in Ferguson.  Then, there was the acceptance speech from Common and John Legend, declaring that Selma is now, and reminding that more black men are incarcerated in the US today than were slaves in 1850.
3. Graham Moore, who adapted the screenplay for The Imitation Game, talked about acceptance, gay rights and his attempted suicide as a teenager who didn’t feel that he belonged.  He urged anyone who’s young and feeling marginalised, that they won’t always feel that way.  In another acceptance speech – documentary maker, Dana Perry, remembered her son who took his own life, saying ‘we should talk about suicide out loud.’
4. Edward Snowden won an Oscar.  Or at least the documentary, Citizen Four, did.  Laura Poitras warned of the threat to democracy in an age of ever increasing surveillance.
5. Eddie Redmayne dedicated his best performance Oscar to people living with motor neurone disease, or ALS.  Julianne Moore dedicated hers to people living with Alzheimers.
6. Alejandro González Iñárritu won best director, and the film he directed, Birdman, won best film.  He called for better government in Mexico, and better treatment of Mexican immigrants in America, asking that the current generation of immigrants in the US ‘be treated with the same dignity and respect as the immigrants who built this country.’
7. Lady Gaga did a Sound of Music medley.  I kid you not. I don’t think it was a political statement, but it rates a mention simply by being.

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