Reflecting on the Oscars 2023

If your ‘For You’ page is anything like mine, you have no doubt been absolutely INUNDATED this past week with hundreds and hundreds of glitzy pics of celebrities walking the not-so-red carpet at the 95th Annual Oscars. Like me, you’ve passively watched thousands of clips of every outfit, dress, and shoe, of every multi-million dollar piece of jewelry, and of every detail of every interview being scrutinized for gossip. I am sorry. You must be exhausted.

And your exhaustion is normal. You’ve been flooded with countless photos and videos that keep screaming one thing at you: money, money, money, money! So much money being shoved in your face! The Oscars red carpet is a competition of wealth. Who has the most expensive dress? Who has the heels that make everyone gasp? Who has the rarest piece of haute couture that took twelve hundred hours of painful hand stitching to make? Walking the red carpet is becoming less and less affordable, and it’s coming at the cost of fashion. Of art.

To be clear, this is not a rant about how much I miss the good ol’ days of the Oscars. The ol’ days were indubitably worse. But there is something about the way Hollywood award shows used to be done that I miss. I miss the events before stylists. I miss the stars who wore shitty off-the-rack outfits. I miss the stars who did their own makeup, their own hair, and showered without assistance. It was trashy, it was fun, it was playful. Today, everyone looks too perfect; it’s creepy. Every celebrity has that same skin-and-bone, Bambi-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights look.

But at the same time, there was a lot to celebrate this year at the Oscars. Ke Huy Quan jumping up and down made everyone happy. Michelle Yeoh is the first Asian woman to win Best Actress. Everything, Everywhere All at Once, the movie Yeoh won her Oscar for, was so good. I cried the whole time. Ruth E. Carter is the first Black woman to win two Oscars for best costume design—one in 2019 for Black Panther and one this year for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I want to celebrate these moments, to give them the space they deserve. 

How can we hold these two forces within us? My anger towards this ridiculous display of wealth and my delight at watching some of my favourite actors march proudly onstage? I want to critique Black and Asian exceptionalism—the assumption that people of colour have to be exceptionally talented, educated or beautiful to have a place at the Oscars, an event that has always celebrated White mediocrity. But I also want to recognize the beauty of these firsts. Can the system be separated from its participants? I don’t know. But I do know that I will continue to watch the Oscars every year, because I can’t help but gawk and shriek and cry and scream at the screen.