I Don’t Give a Shit About the Oscars
Hollywood celebrates itself while working people pay for the show
I do not care about the Oscars. Every year it is the same performance: red carpet, luxury fashion, self-congratulation, and a room full of rich people presenting themselves as the moral voice of society. We are supposed to believe this is bigger than an industry praising itself. Most of the time, it is not. It is power flattering itself in public.
That is why the Oscars matter more than people think. Hollywood is not just entertainment. It helps shape what the public sees as serious, compassionate, or politically meaningful. That is also why its silences matter.
What they will not touch
Celebrities will talk about climate change, mental health, tolerance, kindness, and voting. They will also attack Trump or whichever administration is in power. Let’s be honest, that is easy work. Taking shots at a politician already dominating the news cycle costs very little and makes people sound brave without risking much.
But when the conversation moves toward class power, exploitation, wealth concentration, rent, debt, or who actually benefits from the system, the tone changes. The language gets softer. The message gets vaguer. Suddenly nobody wants to be too specific.
That is not because they are confused. It is because class forces a different kind of question. It stops being about feelings and starts being about power.
Why celebrity politics stays shallow
A lot of people still imagine celebrities as ordinary workers who just became unusually successful. That misses the point. Once they reach the top, they are no longer just selling labor. They become brands, assets, and market value. Their income is tied to endorsements, royalties, licensing, ownership stakes, media contracts, and corporate partnerships. Their public image is part of a larger profit structure.
That changes what they are willing to say. They can criticize cruelty in general terms. They can urge people to care. They can perform moral concern. What they are much less likely to do is question the institutions, ownership structures, and economic interests that support their position. Moral language is safe because it leaves the structure intact. Class language is dangerous because it points directly at the structure.
Greta Thunberg and the line they do not want crossed
Greta Thunberg is useful here because she makes the boundary visible. When she stayed in the climate lane, mainstream celebrities and major media were comfortable embracing her. She could be turned into a symbol of conscience, and climate politics in that form could still be absorbed into branding, awareness campaigns, and elite self-congratulation.
That changed when she moved into Gaza, sanctions, blockade, and Cuba. At that point the politics became harder to sanitize. The issue was no longer just abstract responsibility. It was empire, punishment, and the systems that decide which populations get to suffer quietly. Some people still supported her, of course, but the wider celebrity machine became noticeably more careful.
That contrast matters. It shows that the issue is not whether celebrities support justice. It is what kind of justice feels safe for them to support. They like causes that sound moral and stay manageable. They get quieter when a cause starts naming power, identifying beneficiaries, and connecting suffering to the structure that produces it.
Why charity is easier
This is also why celebrity culture prefers charity to class politics. Charity lets wealthy people appear humane without questioning the arrangement that made their wealth possible. It offers relief, symbolism, and good publicity, but it does not ask why the damage keeps being produced in the first place.
Class politics does ask that. It asks why housing, healthcare, education, and basic security are organized around profit. It asks why so many people live under permanent economic pressure while elite institutions keep expanding. That is a much harder conversation, because it does not end with applause. It ends with conflict.
Fans are loved as audiences, not as a class
Celebrities often say they love their fans. In one sense, that is true. Fans buy tickets, drive streams, build visibility, and keep the machine running. As audiences, they are valuable. As consumers, they are essential.
But working people are rarely addressed honestly as a class. They are spoken to as supporters, communities, and fan bases, which sounds warm but remains commercial. The same people who finance the culture industry almost never hear serious celebrity discussion about wages, labor power, debt, housing, or economic control. Once those topics enter the room, the relationship becomes uncomfortable, because the question is no longer whether celebrities care. The question is where they stand.
The real question
So the real question is not why celebrities avoid class. The answer is already in front of us. Class analysis would force them to confront their own position inside a system that rewards them. It would also force them to choose between broad appeal and political clarity. Most of them prefer broad appeal.
The harder question is why so many people still expect celebrity culture to lead serious political change. Fame is not courage. Visibility is not solidarity. A speech on stage is not organization. The sooner we stop confusing celebrity attention with political seriousness, the sooner we can start taking class politics seriously.
Closing
The Oscars will come and go. The dresses will be photographed, the speeches will be clipped, and the industry will congratulate itself once again. None of that will lower anyone’s rent or make life more secure for the people paying to keep this machine alive.
That is why I do not care about the Oscars. I care about the fact that some of the most visible people in America have enormous influence and still choose to say the safest things possible. That is not neutrality. It is class position.
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I don't care about 'em either, but it seems more like a boring trade show than a political rally.
The Roman emperor Nero provided bread and circuses to maintain his despotic rule, while the U.S. ruling class provides only circuses. The Iran War and shut-down of Persian Gulf oil will intensify stagflation--shrinking job market and possibly runaway inflation, worsen basic services like health care and public schools, and increase the stress on individuals and families. Time to act.