Get the latest gossip
The 2024 Oscars Closed the Gates
This year’s Academy Awards turned on the charm and turned away from anything uncomfortable, even as protests raged outside.
When host Jimmy Kimmel, whose material ranged from the mild to the innocuous (the riskiest he got were some Madame Web punch lines), brought up what a “tough year” it had been, he was referring only to the strike, and while his subsequent tribute to the Teamsters and to labor was lovely, it was hard not to also take note of the awards show’s narrowing lens. Reuters provided a livestream of the pro-Palestine protesters outside the theater who blocked traffic and held aloft signs with messaging like, “What good is art that ignores genocide,” and, if you chose, you could watch it alongside the ceremony, where Gaza went mentioned only by The Zone of Interest ’s Jonathan Glazer, though other attendees wore red cease-fire pins. When Kimmel mentioned Donald Trump’s critical post about the Oscars toward the end of the night, asking, “Isn’t it past your jail time?” after thanking him for watching, even that eruption of the outside into the gleaming confines of the theater felt like it had less to do with politics than with that inescapable burden of being in entertainment: the bad review.
Or read this on VULTURE