By Jessie Gomez
Hooray, the Oscars did not fry my brain tonight!
Among the many awards and cheesy puns by Neil Patrick Harris, the world got the chance to experience a great view of the Oscars. As the event celebrated the cinematic world, many of the award recipients engaged their audience in important conversations.
Issues onstage tonight included: race in Hollywood, mass incarceration, suicide, wage equality, disease/caregiving and immigration.
Award winning Mexican director Alfonoso Cuaron won an Oscar for his film Birdman. In his acceptance speech, Cuaron focused his attention on the current status of the thousands of Latino’s living in this country.
On a serious note, he said, he hoped the “latest generation of immigrants … can be treated with the same dignity and respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.”
Aside from immigration, Graham Moore, who won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for “The Imitation Game,” said in his acceptance speech that he had tried to kill himself as a teenager.
“When I was 16, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird and I felt different and I felt like I did not belong,” he said. “I would like this moment to be for the kid out there who feels like she’s weird and different and feels like she doesn’t belong. … Yes, you do.”
My personal favorite of the night was Patricia Arquette’s speech in which she turned the attention to woman equality in the U.S.
“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen in this nation: We have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality in the U.S.,” said Arquette, who won best supporting actress for portraying the mother in “Boyhood.”
There were many great political moments within the Oscars that made me think about the ways in which our society is currently lacking in. Our government has a long way to go and many issues to fix. We need to not only keep talking about our nation’s issue, but we need to start getting at the root of the cause in order to eradicate those errors.
I hate entertainment news but kudos for the Oscars this year.