The slap that American actor Will Smith dealt to his colleague Chris Rock last year on stage during the 94th Academy Awards not only hit Chris's face, but also the face of the world's most famous and prestigious film awards.
The 95th edition of the ceremony came when officials of the awarding body (the American Academy of Picture Arts and Sciences) learned the lesson well, and the slap seemed to not cause the dizziness expected of it, but led to a real awakening.
As if Will Smith's slap made the next Oscars look the way his fans have been accustomed to for years, officials had to assemble a team of strong guards ready to intervene if anyone tried to resort to violence, perhaps realizing that committing a violent incident simply meant the end of the value that the award had gained over nearly 100 years.
What happened at the Oscars was not far from what happened at the penultimate Golden Globes, which were boycotted by most Hollywood stars due to their lack of diversity and rumors of corruption and bribery, which caused an outright failure that was remedied at the last ceremony, and revived the Golden Globes awarded by the Foreign Journalists Association in New York.
At the new Oscars, the awards expressed a direct response to a vision of rebuilding the world's most important awards, which it did, but this vision needs to answer questions about what these awards mean, and will the ceremony that came in line with expectations lead to the Oscars retaining their value in the world of cinema?
Two works that can be considered foreign have won the most Academy Awards, Everything Everywhere All at Once, made by Asian immigrants, and dominated the Oscars with 7 awards in major categories including Best Picture.
The second, All Quiet on the Western Front, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, so this year's awards were "very colorful," perhaps in response to the backlash that has been mounting in Hollywood and around the world since 2016 and 2017, which saw only white nominations for acting stars in particular.
Although protests over white actors being singled out for Oscar nominations may have been understood as a call for justice for African-American actors in Hollywood, the gains favored Asians, with winners of Asian descent receiving awards in 8 categories, the most awards they received in a single year.
Asian features have appeared on the stage of the Dolby Theatre to receive awards in 2009 and 2020 for Slumdog Millionaire and Parasite.
The same happened in 2001 and 2021 with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Nomadland and Minari.
Explicit messages
Despite the pressure exerted in favor of certain films, or the money poured into trends and launched from Hollywood to spread at lightning speed in the world, there is a positive point for American society as a whole: these awards seem to the observer to be largely fair, and even expressive, as they should be in any society that claims to be democratic, the different tastes and trends in American society.
This can be seen even with regard to the selection of foreign films, as the judgment comes as an expression of American tendencies, despite the participation of many filmmakers in the world, but the largest number and the most influential percentage in the results remain for the American voice and the American point of view.
Americans reject war and fully agree with the message sent through "Everything is quiet on the Western Front", and they show absolute sympathy for that Chinese immigrant and her crisis in the film "Everything, Everywhere, at the Same Time", without discrimination against her as she is not white or not a native citizen.
In both cases, it was the artistic excellence of the eloquence it meant in portraying the situation within the film.
Perhaps the memories of the "Oscars" meal before 2016 support the same idea, as it could have been predicted by the Oscar follower every year, it will contain a film starring a black actor about racial discrimination in the United States in the past, a historical one linking America and Europe, a third romantic, and so on.
That meal ended the right-wing conservative trend that manifested itself in American society with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016. Despite this, Hollywood woke up from the first moment, and the name of the former president appeared on the tongues of its stars, mocking and cursing in all forums, until he left the seat of power, and the awards regained some balance, although not complete.
Courtesy letters
Despite revenues exceeding two billion dollars, the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects is all that a director of James Cameron's size was able to get, and it is a well-deserved award, and other than that, he added to the first part of his film "Avatar" only less exciting events than those mentioned in the first part, and there was nothing in the script, acting or other elements that could distinguish the new part.
The same was true with Tom Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick, which grossed unprecedented revenues. Despite the technology used in it, despite much dazzling, and the response of the box office to the work, the creative artistic addition was not prominent enough to win, which it did, except for the award for best sound effects.
Steven Spielberg, who has a distinguished history in Hollywood with his film "The Fabelmans," did not affect the vote in any way, and awarded the Oscar only the best soundtrack, working with his beauty did not live up to the expected level of Spielberg, but it is acceptable from a man who recalls his memories visually and artistically.
African-American fashion designer Ruth Carter, who won two Oscars for Fashion Design in 2019 and 2023, has made history as an African-American winner of two Oscars for two sequels, Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022).