The geopolitics of the Oscars

With the world as it is, it can be refreshing to switch from the news over to the 98th annual Oscars and… oh, nope. Sorry. There’s geopolitics there too, starting with…

• Your red carpet arrival

If you’re thinking Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre looked more fortified than normal, you’re right: it featured a one-mile perimeter, drone surveillance, and various three-letter agencies amid an FBI leak about unverified and unspecified Iranian threats.

And it all came after earlier leaks of a presumed NSA intercept of an encrypted message in Farsi, starting with “tavajjoh” (attention) before a male voice rattled off a string of numbers. There was speculation it was some kind of classic numbers station — a shortwave radio to secretly activate sleeper cells abroad.

It’s pure inference, but really hints at a wartime public on edge.

Anyway, you’re just in time for…

• The host’s opening monologue

Conan O’Brien returned for a second consecutive year, flagging in advance the tightrope of hosting a frivolous awards show amid all the global disruption. But there’s precedent:

• Billy Crystal nailed it in 1990 by weaving historic events into a classic joke about Hollywood’s self-absorption: "Six months ago, who would have possibly thought that the Berlin Wall would come down, that Nelson Mandela would be freed... and most incredibly, Meryl Streep would not be nominated for an Academy Award."

And Conan himself said he took inspiration from the last talk-show host to run an Oscars night while an Iran-related crisis was doubling oil prices:

• It was 1980 when Johnny Carson gave a nod to ABC’s Nightline, which famously opened each broadcast with the latest Iran hostage day count — Carson instead dunked on the Oscars going over time again: ‘Well, it is day 44 of this Oscars.’

This time around, Conan snuck in a tight joke about all the security ("concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities"), but otherwise emphasised the unifying role of the arts amid these “frightening times”, highlighting the “31 countries across six continents” helping “to tell stories that remind us of our shared humanity."

And a quick shout-out to his opening AI joke, too: “I am Conan O’Brien and I am honoured to be the last human host of the Academy Awards. Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.”

Anyway, with the opening monologue out of the way, the Oscars is really all about…

• The nominees

Interestingly, two of the nominated films not only focused on Iran, but on the plight of its people: France’s entry (It Was Just an Accident) is a revenge drama about the regime’s persecution, while one of the documentary nominees (Cutting Through Rocks) follows an Iranian woman’s long fight for basic rights.

But the best documentary winner? That’d be Mr. Nobody Against Putin, tracking a Russian teacher’s quiet resistance to Putin’s wartime propaganda. The filmmakers eventually helped him flee, and one used his acceptance speech to offer a warning on how you lose your country: “though countless small, little acts of complicity.”

Oh, and given our penchant for intrigue, a quick shout-out to Brazil’s The Secret Agent, an espionage thriller following a professor fleeing persecution. It’s set during Brazil’s 1970s US-backed dictatorship, but audiences see it as a commentary on recent history (eg Bolsonaro’s coup conviction), and the dangers of forgetting our authoritarian pasts.

And… that’s a wrap.