After largely apolitical awards season, Oscars telecast features calls for peace in Gaza and Ukraine
Cillian Murphy dedicated his Best Actor win to "peacemakers," while other filmmakers made more direct references to Gaza and Ukraine
Aux News Oscars
At the Film Independent Spirit Awards a few weeks ago, pro-Palestine activists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza disrupted the show a handful of times (that’s what happens when an awards ceremony is held in a big tent outside), leading to a number of presenters and winners struggling to find ways to appropriately acknowledge what was happening both in the world and outside of the tent—most of them probably didn’t know what was actually being yelled outside, but the little off-the-cuff jokes didn’t play well for the people at home who did know.
Though not in any official capacity, the Academy Awards tonight skewed a little more explicit in at least acknowledging Gaza, first on the red carpet with a number of celebrities (including Billie Eilish, Mahershala Ali, Ramy Youssef, and Mark Ruffalo) wearing red “Artists For Ceasefire” pins, plus others wearing Palestinian flag pins, and then a few times onstage (including Cillian Murphy dedicating his Best Actor win to “Peacemakers”).
In his acceptance speech when The Zone Of Interest won Best International Film, writer-director Jonathan Glazer talked about how the film—which is about the seemingly mundane life of a Nazi family running Auschwitz—shows “where dehumanization leads, at its worst.” He then pivoted to talk about dehumanization in Gaza, saying, “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many people,” adding, “whether the victims of October the seventh in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims, this dehumanization, how do we resist?”
Glazer ended his speech by saying, “All our choices are made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather ‘look what we do now.”
Similarly, with Russia’s war on Ukraine still ongoing, 20 Days In Mariupol director Mstyslav Chernov seemed laser-focused on what he wanted to say when he got to the stage. He said he was happy to win the statue for his home country of Ukraine, but that he wished he had never made the film—which chronicles the early days of Russia’s invasion. He went on to say that he wished Russia had never invaded his country and that it had never imprisoned Ukrainian civilians and soldiers, and he called on the people in the room to make sure that the people of Ukraine are not forgotten.
He ended his speech by saying, “cinema forms memories and memories form history,” which received a big standing ovation… and then the orchestra started playing “I’m Just Ken.” That part was weird, but it’s the Oscars. What are you gonna do?
20 Comments
Hamas really cares about celebrities
Not as much as Israel:I guess Israel was so disappointed that there were no rapes on Oct. 7th they had to import an actual rapist.
“I guess Israel was so disappointed that there were no rapes on Oct. 7th…”Lie much, scumbag?I did not see that coming.
Bro, you’re being a real Hamas right now, like Doctors Without Borders and the country of South Africa.
https://unwatch.org/evidence-of-unrwa-aid-to-hamas-on-and-after-october-7th/Facts and feelings– bro.
“Peacemakers”, Cillian?
And a massive “Fuck you” to everyone lying that Glazer was “refuting his Jewishness” by cutting off the second half of his sentence.
Came across a great piece by David Zirin (a sports journalist!) exquisitely dismantling those bullshit hot takes claiming Glazer’s refuting his Jewishness:https://www.thenation.com/article/world/jonathan-glazer-oscar-speech-gaza-israel-judaism/ The common thread with all of them is that, rather than reckon with Glazer’s argument that his “Jewishness and the Holocaust [are] being hijacked by an occupation,” they only—and shamelessly—use part of the quote as a way to make it sound like Glazer is rejecting his religion and culture, when the opposite is obviously the case. He is actually reclaiming his culture from the pampered pro-Israel media prizefighters who argue that Judaism and Zionism are one and the same: that a 5,500 year old religion and culture must exist only as the support system for a 76-year-old colonial ethno-state. To call out this lie is a daring and dangerous act, and Glazer should be commended for standing in the tradition of debate—not of calumny and lies.
He doesn’t even know what the word refute means.
Peace plan for Ukraine: The Russian military gets completely out. Back to the 1991 borders.All attacks from Russia stop.
Simple plan.
Many people have criticised the Pope, saying was out of line saying that Ukraine should simply surrender and he should keep his nose out of it, but I put it to you: every minute His Holiness is weighing in one geopolitics is a minute he’s not diddling kids.
That’s why THIS Pope being wrong about this is a let-down. He seems to have his head on mostly straight, and it’s doubtful that he’s been warped like that in the back of his mind.
But people are human, and he may be getting poor information from Kremlin-buddies/puppets within the Vatican. The Kremlin was able to take over too much of the right-wing in the U.S. and Europe, so why not have some hold within the Vatican?
Actually, it just occurred to me that a number of Russian “citizens”, or out-of-jail prisoners of the Kremlin, might be Catholic.
It wouldn’t be below Putin and his buddies to threaten to execute every one of them on trumped-up charges if Francis didn’t do something like this statement.
And it’d have an impact, precisely because Pope Francis does seem to care in general, and specifically about people.
It’s probable he has a Russian Orthodox bishop or whate’er-the-fuck as an advisor, and those guys are all wholly-owned subsidiaries of the FSB (formerly KGB). It’s how they survived the atheist Communist years, by turning the whole church into state informants. Russia had been using Russian Orthodox churches in Ukraine as staging grounds and depots for insurgents during the war, so if His Holiness has got a ROC advisor, I guarantee he’s being fed shit.
Better than Pope Francis’ plan, which is to just wave a white flag.
Ya know, there are a couple of Beijing/Kremlin folks that usually weigh in as the topics go this way. I wonder if the Giz-family needs to step up their game so as to become influential enough to be worthy of shill notice again?
He’d probably take it since all the bloggers are giving it to him, but after watching the clip via the Oscars YouTube channel, the context of getting an award for Oppenheimer — after coincidently being praised by “Ghandi” — I would interpret Cillian Murphy’s “the Peacemakers” to be more abstract than has been the trend. As in, more about Oppenheimer with maybe bit of Ireland thrown-in, along with the United Nations and several periods of relative peace over the years, rather than just about Gaza, where , though it may have taken a bit to get there, President Biden appears to be one of the few “peacemakers” around and thus far, that’s a stretch of the term.
Isn’t peacemaker an old west slang term for a gun? Cillian Murphy kinda sounds like a cowboy name.
Calls for peace are about as useless as a poopy flavored lollipop.