The Oscars after MeToo: Has Hollywood understood?
After the 90th Oscars awards ceremony in Los Angeles commentators are not so preoccupied with the winners, like the fantasy romance "The Shape of Water", which won four Oscars. Instead they examine how Hollywood is reacting to the abuse scandals and whether it is defying the concept of America propagated by Donald Trump.
MeToo has made an impact
There was a sense of frankness at this year's Awards, NRC Handelsblad writes in praise:
“Finally an Oscar ceremony that takes itself seriously. ... One that didn't pussyfoot around. 2017 was a big year for the film industry and the reason was named right in the opening address: the sexual abuse of power in Hollywood that has been so effectively denounced via the hashtags MeToo and TimesUp that certain men are now anxiously striking out in all directions. With film mogul Harvey Weinstein as the monstrous figurehead, a malicious side of Hollywood has been unmasked. 2017 is the year in which the film industry understood that it actively propagated such abuse with its films.”
At least it wasn't musty and bitter
All things considered the event was a welcome change to politics à la Trump, the taz's US correspondent Dorothea Hahn writes:
“Instead of Trump's musty, backward-looking, white, patriarchal, bitter, revengeful and supposedly 'great' America, this year's Academy Awards celebrated a country that is open. For women and immigrants, for Afro-Americans and Latinos, for dreamers, gays and lesbians, for people who talk in complete sentences and for a feminist who calls herself an anarchist. ... Certainly, this ceremony didn't mark the end of Hollywood's sexism and violence scandals. ... Nevertheless: Hollywood has shown that it is ready to listen - and to change.”
That wasn't very convincing
Diário de Notícias is less convinced by the spectacle in Los Angeles:
“Why did people go there? To show the world that things are changing and women are no longer merely accessories for old men? To convey the impression that they are aware of the need for more diversity, which was why a Mexican director won the best film award and for the first time an Afro-American received the Oscar for the best original screenplay? These historic decisions failed - for whatever reason - to make the expected triumphant impression. ... Here in Hollywood the clouds soon disperse and the sun always comes out. Perhaps in a year it will cause very different flowers to bloom.”