Red Carpet Resilience – An Oscars Reflection

Yesterday afternoon before heading home to watch the Oscars with friends, I passed by this red carpet in a store window. Its appearance was so striking and bold that I felt compelled to enter the store just to take a closer look.

How incredible is it to think that something as visually brilliantly bold as this red carpet has been walked on and trampled over time and time again – and yet still remains so vivid and bright.

Ironically enough, now as I look back at this simple snapshot, this red carpet’s enduring vivacity is a reflection of a theme that consistently ran through the entire Academy Awards ceremony last night: the ideals of change, personal presence, resilience, and survival.

Beneath host Chris Rock’s humorous monologues, the flowing gowns, and the shiny golden statues lied a truth, deeply entrenched in multiple acceptance speeches, nominations, and musical performances – that we are constantly stepped on and live in an age where issues such as global warming, discrimination, sexual abuse, kidnapping, and murder are prevalent to our contemporary culture. Hollywood’s A-List strived to bring this reality to our attention:

Last night’s speeches powerfully acknowledged global warming and our active destruction of our Earth and the atmosphere:

During his acceptance speech, Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio asserted: “The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Climate change is real, it is happening right now. We need to work collectively together…and support the leaders around the world who speak for all of humanity…and for those people whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed,” he said, explicitly pointing out a need for change.

Winning a grand total of six awards, Mad Max: Fury Road is an apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet years after the collapse of civilization, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and almost everyone is crazed in fighting for the necessities of life. During her acceptance speech for winning Best Costume Design, Mad Max’s Jenny Beavan also highlighted the danger of global warming, giving a serious warning that the dystopia depicted in the film could become a reality, “if we’re not kinder to each other and if we don’t stop polluting our atmosphere.”

Nominees and winners also brought to light the destructive relevance of physical and mental abuse, as well as sexual assault:

Room was nominated in the Best Picture category and won Brie Larson an Oscar for Best Actress. The movie depicts a mother and son who survive being held hostage and finally gain their freedom to cross the threshold into the world beyond the cage of their captivity.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, winning director of Best Documentary Short for A Girl In the River: The Price of Forgiveness, gave an inspiring acceptance speech. Her film sheds light on the practice of honor killings – specifically focusing on a young woman in Pakistan sentenced to death for falling in love, who becomes a rare survivor of the country’s harsh judicial system. In her speech, Obaid-Chinoy noted that the Prime Minister of Pakistan decided to change the law on honor killings after seeing the film.

The Hunting Ground also received attention last night – a documentary depicting college students who have been raped on campus and face retaliation and harassment as they fight for justice. Making an appearance at the ceremony last night, Vice President Joe Biden proposed a pledge to “change the culture” of sexual abuse and eradicate the notion that the victim is at fault. He then introduced Lady Gaga to perform her original song “Till It Happens To You” – the movie’s anthem and a universal song about loss in life, highlighting the pain of sexual assault. Gaga appeared passionately singing behind a white piano as men and women who were victims of sexual assault joined her onstage with messages written on their arms such as “It’s not your fault” and “It happened to me.” Although the song didn’t win an Oscar, the performance was received with a standing ovation and many tears, both in the audience and on stage.

Lastly, concluding the evening in the Best Picture category, Spotlight took home the gold. The movie portrays the investigations of allegations against different priests linked to more than eighty cases of sexual molestation. The reporters in the movie make it their mission to provide proof of a cover-up of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church. The film not only received critical acclaim and success, but the piece powerfully shed light on the corruption of the Church and the frequency of sexual abuse today.

Overall…

Although these moments from the Oscars last night were linked to tender, dark, and difficult issues that we deal with as a global community, we must take a step back and evaluate the powerful messages of hope, strength, and empowerment that arise from these works. Of course, Hollywood is flawed with a variety of problems – and so is mankind. The issues raised by this year’s winners and nominees such as sexual abuse and global warming still exist, and we continue to get trampled over and stepped on like the red carpet in the store I came across yesterday. But, this year’s Oscars ceremony served as a vivid testament to our strength as a race, even in the face of tragedy – raising awareness of the conditions around our delicate world so we can take action towards a brighter future.

If we reflect back, the mother and son held hostage in Room overcame their kidnapper and escaped into the world, breaking the shackles of their captivity. The Paki girl in Obaid-Chinoy’s documentary endured her family’s abuse and profoundly changed her country’s law with her story of survival. The victims that emerged on stage during Lady Gaga’s performance have survived rape and bravely stepped forward to reveal their vulnerability and their strength. And Spotlight powerfully uncovers the acts of sexual assault in the Church to bring awareness to this cause.

While all of these artistic pieces awarded last night are different from one another, they all project the same promising moral. Perhaps, therefore, Hollywood does not exist for the sole purpose of entertainment and profit. Films also possess the power to reflect and enrich our raging capacity as human beings, to stand up for ourselves and for each other. Because judging by these particular Oscar moments, we all can feel like victims of adversity in one way or another. But together, we gain strength and fortitude in overcoming life’s obstacles. We have the power to spark positive changes that ripple powerfully across the globe. We have a voice and continue to make ourselves heard. We have come this far and will continue to fight for the ideals of integrity and dignity. And in the midst of this all, whether on the silver screen or in real life, we have survived.