From announcement mess-ups to Nicole Kidman’s awkward clapping, the 2017 Oscars proved to be as entertaining as the nominees that evening were throughout 2016.
The biggest highlight of the evening, as well as the biggest mishap, was in the final Oscar announcement of the night. The winner of the Best Picture Academy Award, originally announced as La La Land, was met with joy, quickly turning into shock, confusion, and joy once again, once it was announced that Moonlight had actually won the Oscar for Best Picture. This win by Moonlight was not only shocking, but powerful, as it is the first Academy Award for Best Picture awarded to a film characterised as both black- and LGBTQ-related in content.
Along with that win, there had been an increasingly ethnically diverse set of winners this year, contrasting with the all-white nominees who have dominated the past two years’ Oscars celebrations. In this respect, one of the most memorable wins of the night was that of Viola Davis for Best Supporting Actress for the film Fences. This was mainly due to her captivating acceptance speech, appreciating the arts as a whole and her place in it, stating, “People ask me all the time – what kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola? And I say exhume those bodies. Exhume those stories – the stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those stories to fruition, people who fell in love and lost. I became an artist and thank God I did, because we are the only people and profession that celebrate what it means to live a life. So, here’s to August Wilson who exhumed and exalted the ordinary people.”
Meeting that same memorable effect, the winner for Best Supporting Actor, Mahershala Ali, was the first Muslim actor to win an Academy Award for the movie Moonlight, continuing the incredible influence this one movie has had within the industry during the past year.
Moving on from the pleasant surprises of the night, a win that was not met with the same degree of joy, but rather the exact opposite, was that of Casey Affleck for Best Actor. This win was disappointing and appalling to many, as the actor had previously been previously charged with sexual harassment. Although the case was settled in 2010, the response was not one anyone would have wanted, especially considering he had beaten out Denzel Washington for the award.
What garnered no surprise were the wins for Best Actress and Best Animated Picture. Emma Stone, bringing in the Academy Award for best actress in a leading role, won the award for her brilliant role in the movie La La Land, winning that movie one of six Academy Awards. Similarly, the movie Zootopia won Walt Disney Pictures an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, though this comes as no surprise considering Walt Disney Pictures has been dominating this category since 2007.
Despite the outrageous and wonderful surprises, next year’s Oscars are bound to be as entertaining as the last.
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