For the Oscar-winners, the times, they’ve a-changed
The four-hour ceremony threatened to turn into a lecture on how Hollywood is already busily vanquishing racism, sexism and other ills
But the ceremony eventually came to feel less like an outraged call to arms than a long lecture, written in thick black gold capital letters, about what a wonderfully warm and welcoming place Hollywood is. Everyone agreed that the times weren’t just a changin’. They had already changed.
.. It’s understandable that, in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, the ceremony’s organisers wanted to repair some of the damage done to their industry’s reputation. But the Academy isn’t practising everything it preaches. There may have been a utopian range of presenters on the stage, but they handed the main prizes to a male director, male screenwriters, a male composer, a male cinematographer, a male editor, a male costume designer, and so on. Over all, there were six female winners on the night, and 33 male winners, which means that, basically, men won everything they possibly could, and that the female nominees didn’t get to stand up until Ms McDormand insisted that they do so during her rabble-rousing speech.