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Hollywood has learned its lesson. That was the general consensus after a relatively outrage-free Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night. Host Conan O’Brien stayed away from politics during his opening monologue, and except for the occasional aside in an acceptance speech, the award recipients did, too, and conservatives applauded. The 2025 show stood in sharp contrast to the Oscars in 2017, the year after President Donald Trump was first elected, when the ceremony was as political as a White House Correspondents Dinner.
But anyone who was paying attention to the films that were feted knows that Hollywood has actually learned nothing, which is why ratings were down. Just over 18 million of us watched the show, compared to 127 million who watched the Super Bowl. There are many reasons why, but most come down to one word: “Anora.”
“Anora,” the film that won best picture and four other awards, was described by The Associated Press as “a strip club Cinderella story without the fairy tale ending.” The profanity in the film is so extreme that O’Brien mentioned in his monologue the number of times a certain expletive had been used (479) and IMDB rates the profanity throughout the film “severe.”
But the AP’s description doesn’t begin to address the other reason many Americans wouldn’t see it, which is that “Anora” has many scenes in which pornography is poorly disguised as art. As The (U.K.) Times reported, the film is “the most sexually explicit winner of the Best Picture Oscar, and honestly, it isn’t even a close contest.”
In fact, some people on social media, deceived by characterizations of the film as a sort of “Pretty Woman” for a new generation, said they watched the film the day after the Oscars and were disturbed by what they saw.
It can be argued that one cannot tell a “strip club Cinderella story” without profanity and sex any more than one can tell a Snow White story without seven dwarves (as the upcoming Disney remake tried to do). Fans of “Anora” say that its unsettling realism was essential to the film, which employed real-life sex workers for the cast.
But it also can be argued that the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences dwell in a self-congratulatory bubble that in no way reflects the Americans it wants to show up each weekend in theaters. As the AP article noted, Anora had “one of the lowest box-office totals ever for a best picture winner with $16 million in ticket sales.” The film has made more money outside the U.S. than within it.
In short, America’s “best picture” has been seen by remarkably few Americans, and that’s unlikely to change, even with the traditional post-Oscar bump.
Looking at Oscar winners over the past half-century, one gets nostalgic for the years in which the best picture was one that most movie-goers had seen and loved — films like “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Gladiator,” “Forrest Gump,” “Chariots of Fire” and “Rocky.” Those types of films engender a residual affection that viewers want to relive, which helps drive viewership when it’s Academy Awards time.
Of course the use of profanity — or the lack thereof — does not make a film good or bad, but profanity, nudity and sex shrinks the audience pool. And yet Hollywood gives us “Anora” and then wrings its hands when most Americans decline to see it.
Americans love movies, and we long for blockbusters that draw us to crowded, darkened theaters to laugh, gasp, cheer and cry. There’s nothing like the moment when a movie ends and we all sit there stunned for a moment at how good it was, and sometimes people spontaneously erupt into applause. Please, Hollywood, give us those movies again and — this is important — with a run time under 2 hours because we are busy and babysitters aren’t cheap. If you make movies more like that, and less like OnlyFans on the big screen, we’ll show up every Saturday night.
That great Kieran Culkin moment
Many conservatives on social media cheered best supporting actor winner Kieran Culkin for his charming acceptance speech in which he talked about wanting more children and how his wife had promised him a fourth child if he won an Oscar. It was, some people said, the kind of pro-natal messaging we need (as opposed to the relentless stream of headlines announcing Elon Musk’s latest out-of-wedlock child).
But that speech was even more powerful if you consider the role that Culkin played that won him the Oscar.
In “A Real Pain,” he plays a childless, unmarried man struggling with addiction who is on a trip with a cousin who is a devoted family man. At the end of the film, Culkin’s character sits desolately in the airport, unsure of what to do, while his cousin goes home to a wife and son excited to see his dad. It is an extraordinary juxtaposition that went unremarked in most stories about Culkin’s win and comes the same week that The New York Times published an essay celebrating people who break ties with their parents. The cultural headwinds may have changed politically, but they are still blowing hard against traditional mores regarding family — in some circles, anyway.
Kudos to Culkin for his joyful shoutout to family life. May his kids never go “no contact.” But maybe he should drop the expletive that got him censored next time.
The struggle is real
Last week, Semafor Media assembled some of the biggest names in media to engage in conversation about the reasons for the decline in trust in the news — and what can change. It’s a couple of hours but doesn’t feel long, as each panelist only got a couple of minutes to speak. You can watch it on YouTube at your leisure.
I thought the Semafor journalists asked thoughtful and intelligent questions and the panelists, for the most part, answered in kind. So I was surprised to hear Megyn Kelly castigate Semafor’s Ben Smith for his questions on her podcast the next day. Her take on the event was nothing like I had experienced as a viewer, even a viewer who is an avid consumer of conservative media and listens to Kelly’s podcast regularly. It wasn’t quite Zelenkyy vs. Trump in the Oval Office, but Kelly’s YouTube channel described her conversation with Smith as “tense” and I’m still trying to figure out why.
Here’s my piece on the event, and another on Jeff Bezos’ surprising directive at The Washington Post:
What will restore trust in media, according to Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and top editors
Recommended Reading
Widespread legalization of marijuana has made the smell of it much more common — amid many other more serious concerns. Eric Schulzke explores what legalization has wrought for Deseret Magazine, writing, “At the federal level, marijuana remains a Schedule 1 illegal drug, alongside heroin, LSD and a few others. But at the state level, the race to legalization in recent years has been dizzying.
The latest Deseret News/Harris X poll examines the popularity — and unpopularity — of some of the people Trump has chosen to serve in his second administration. I would have thought Secretary of State Marco Rubio would have come in first, but I was wrong. Can you guess the most and least popular?
New national poll shows how Americans view some of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks
Finally
Lent — or as some people call it, the Mark Wahlberg 40-day challenge — isn’t just for Catholics anymore, as Christians across many denominations have embraced the season of penitence and sacrifice that precedes Easter. I’ll be giving up dessert, which is no small thing given that many of my breakfasts look alarmingly like cake. If you are observing Lent, how and why? I’d love to know. Reach me at Jgraham@deseretnews.com. Thank you for reading.