THE SPECTATOR
The internet has killed the Hollywood star
Come friendly bombs and fall on Hollywood, it isn’t fit for doing good. Another year, another dreadful Oscars, another round of moral lectures from the beautiful people. It’s all so tiresome. The only reason most people pay attention to these irritating award ceremonies is precisely so that they can be irritated. So there was a vegan theme at this year’s Academy Awards. So the show had no host. So Brad Pitt is angry about impeachment. So someone said ‘workers of the world unite’. So Joaquin Phoenix is mad (in all senses) about what mankind is doing to the animal kingdom. So Natalie Portman, in what she called ‘my subtle way’, had the names of the women directors who weren’t nominated for awards sewn into her dress. So what? All these people are ridiculous. Nothing they say makes any difference to anything. Actors are increasingly aware, thanks in part to Ricky Gervais’s wonderful ribbing of them at the Golden Globes, that nobody cares what they think. At some unconscious level, these actors must know that they don’t really know anything about politics or the real world. They can’t admit this to themselves, of course, human nature being what it is, so they double down. They convince themselves that any angry reaction to their moralizing is an indication that they have dared to speak truth. How brave they are! And so the infuriating cycle continues. Actors end up almost trolling the public, and the public trolls them back on social media.
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