The 2017 Oscars telecast didn’t have a profound political moment like Meryl Streep‘s Golden Globes speech or David Harbour‘s righteous proclamation at the SAG Awards in January, but there were certainly a number of references to politics and the policies of Donald Trump, including Best Foreign Language Film winner Asghar Farhadi (“The Salesman”), who made a statement in absentia after boycotting the ceremony over Trump’s attempted ban against refugees and immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal also spoke out against Trump’s proposed wall along the Mexican border while presenting an award. But our readers have had enough of the politics. That’s what they told us in a recent poll.
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Of the readers who responded, 56% have said that the Oscars should have toned down the political content. Another 32% — almost a third — though the Oscars found just the right balance of politics and entertainment. And only 12% wished there had been more speeches and commentary against Trump. That might have included John Irving, the Oscar winning writer of “The Cider House Rules” (1999), who wrote a guest column in the Hollywood Report urging the Oscar winners to be as unabashedly political as they wanted to be without worrying about censoring themselves.
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Trump himself has been unabashedly vocal about the entertainers who have spoken out against him, including the “overrated” Streep. He even blamed the embarrassing Oscars ending on politics — “La La Land” was mistakenly named the Best Picture winner instead of the rightful champ, “Moonlight,” because “they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end.”
Check out our poll results below. If you disagree, you can keep voting here. And make sure to join the discussion in our forums.
