The 97th Annual Academy Awards took place on Sunday night, which demonstrated once again the confused and inconsistent morality of the Hollywood film industry. From the Best Picture winner Anora to the trans Best Actress nominee that was recently ‘cancelled’ for past tweets, it was clear that there is no moral system in place. Host Conan O’Brien was a refreshing, silly center to the awards show that wasn’t preachy or overtly political. However, the notorious reputation Hollywood has developed socially and politically over the decades was illustrated throughout.
Sean Baker’s comedy-romance film surprised many by taking home the awards for Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Director, and ultimately Best Picture. The film revolves around a stripper and prostitute that marries the son of a Russian oligarch. The film’s star, Mikey Madison, has received widespread acclaim for her performance, but was not expected to take home the award on Sunday night.
Writer-director Sean Baker has made a career out of small, independent films almost always centered around ‘sex workers’ of various kinds. The last 5 of his films, which make up the bulk of his feature length releases, all feature prostitutes, strippers, or porn stars. His next film is also about a sex worker of some kind. Baker has been quoted as saying that he believes ‘sex work’ should be decriminalized everywhere. “[Sex work should be] decriminalized and not in any way regulated, because it’s a sex worker’s body and it’s up to them to decide how they will use it in their livelihood.”
He always portrays these characters in a positive light, never intending to depict the work they do as morally wrong. Hollywood awarding the film as much as it did on Sunday illustrates their moral confusion around sexual morality. At the same time as praising a filmmaker who is promoting legalizing prostitution, the film industry is constantly accused of being shot through with pedophilia, sex trafficking, and sexual abuse, epitomized by Harvey Weinstein and alleged associations with Jeffrey Epstein. Or, is this maybe the goal? Attempt to normalize sexual slavery to skirt accusations and condemnation?
Sean Baker became the most awarded individual for a single film at the ceremony, personally taking home 4 awards.
Another nominee for Best Actress was Karla Sofía (formerly Carlos) Gascón for Emilia Pérez. As the film garnered heaps of awards early, even though it was horribly received by audiences, the film’s Oscar hopes were marred by resurfaced tweets from the trans star. Numerous headlines just a few weeks ago praised the first nomination of a trans actor as a wonderful achievement and sign of social progress. The controversy that followed illustrated the failure of Hollywood’s woke, intersectional morality.
“Marginalized” communities (often woke-speak for anyone that is outside of traditional, historically Christian morality like LGBTQ+) are usually treated as if they can do no wrong. An incident like Gascón’s tweets resurfacing shines a light on the reality that Hollywood has no true objective standard of right and wrong. They don’t know how to handle an individual from this protected class spouting off statements that they would vehemently condemn if stated by a Christian white male. The actual statements on Gascón’s twitter are a mixed bag, with some being comments many conservative Christians might agree with, and others being genuinely mean or unnecessarily cruel at best.
Gascón was present at the award ceremony and Conan even made a few jokes about the situation. Compared to jokes made in the past at the expense of formerly “cancelled” individuals like Mel Gibson, the ones directed at Gascón were fairly tame. With no objective moral framework, the film industry is only able to assess these “controversies” arbitrarily and inconsistently. The Hollywood ecosystem desperately wants to be a voice of morality in modern society, as demonstrated by moralizing and secular preaching during acceptance speeches, but regularly stumbles over itself because it has no foundation.
None of this is new. For decades now Hollywood has preached to and chided the rest of the country for various political and social differences. The increase in overt moralizing from Hollywood elite has an almost direct correlation to a decrease in Oscar viewership. Not many in the general American public seem to care about the Academy Awards anymore. None of us should be surprised at the inconsistent and random moral standard displayed by a secular film industry.
The only consistent way to have a moral framework is from a Biblical, Christian foundation. Without that at the heart of a society or group, the current state Hollywood is in will be the inevitable result.
