By Asish Samson

When the Academy Awards or Oscars as they are popularly known were presented on Sunday night Get out, won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. While it was nominated in other categories like Best Actor, Best Director and Best Picture, it faced stiff competition from movies like Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, Spielberg’s The Post, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and The Darkest Hour among others. Ultimately, The Shape of Water won the Best Picture. While most people would agree that it was well deserved as usual, some liberals started propagating the idea that “Get Out” should have won and the only reason it lost was because of (Surprise!) : Racism and White people.

Some of these gems took to twitter to express their outrage over this “injustice”. A user named “Jake”(@fpsnake) on Twitter blamed “delusional scary old white people” for this. Another user Imran Siddiquee went off against Gary Oldman for winning the Best Actor award over Daniel Kaluuya. He called Oldman an “accused abuser playing a white supremacist terrorist”. Ironically the character which Oldman played was that of Winston Churchill, the furious rival and one of the chief forces responsible for the fall of Adolf Hitler, the most notorious white supremacist of all time.  Even more ironic or perhaps moronic is another user who called herself the “Wielder of Nazibreaker”  ranting against Gary Oldman calling his performance “flatulent” and “blustering” just because he beat Daniel Kaluuya for the award. Another user called Harley O’Donnell claimed that Daniel Kaluuya was “robbed” of the award while “White boy Gary” got it for “Playing a racist”. There are many more examples like this.

Even some sections of the media took up this narrative. Esquire Magazine’s Sam Parker wrote an article which claims that Get out should have won the Oscar just so that it could give a signal to people that “change was underway in Hollywood”. Yes, according to him the awards should be not be given on technical, directorial or artistic merit but just to virtue signal to the public. He also criticised the Academy for being “76% percent male and 94% white until 2014”.  USA today’s Andrea Mandell also wrote an article which slammed the Oscars for not being diverse enough.

What these people do not seem to realize is that they are asking for award based just on skin colour while also criticising others from winning just based on skin colour. Isn’t that what racism is? Aren’t they advocating for race supremacy? The very thing they claim to fight against, they are espousing.

Personally, I found it quite surprising that Get out even got so many nominations at all. When I first watched the film I found to be quite average, rather forgettable. Yes, it was a different concept but I felt it squandered its potential with lacklustre screenplay. The climax sequence was the only good part of the film. I felt all the glowing reviews the film got were because people were too afraid to criticise it for fear of being called a racist and that the film itself was overlooked against the message it delivers. This has been a recent trend in Hollywood in which critics give good reviews to average films just because they portray some liberal views.

All in all, even the Oscars this year couldn’t escape the liberal meltdown and outrage.