Earlier this year, I took myself to the movies to watch Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest. It took my breath away. The film's depiction of Germans' everyday silence and quiet compliance as complicity in the face of the Holocaust’s horrors and atrocities stayed with me for weeks. To this day, I’m thinking about the film's shiver-inducing use of sound and the absence thereof, the very casualness with which evil can be induced. It carries a message you can’t help but analogize to this current moment in history.
Last week, The Zone of Interest won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The below, in its entirety, is the speech Glazer delivered, his voice shaking slightly less than the sheet of paper held tightly in his hands:
Thank you so much. I’m gonna read. Thank you to the Academy for this honor and to our partners A24, Film4, Access, and Polish Film Institute; to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for their trust and guidance; to my producers, actors, collaborators. All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, “Look what they did then,” rather, “Look what we do now.” Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the — [Applause.] Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist? [Applause.] Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, the girl who glows in the film, as she did in life, chose to. I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance. Thank you. (Emphasis mine.)
Immediately, Glazer's speech was irresponsibly misquoted by Variety, among others, which wrongly claimed that the director refuted his Jewishness, instead of, as he said, his Jewishness "being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people." In his next words, as you can read, he mentioned the Israeli victims of October 7 and the Palestinian victims in Gaza over the last five months. I can understand, maybe, an initial or partial or distracted listen of his words leading to a degree of confusion. Sure. But we — and certainly a news outlet with supposed journalistic standards — owe people more than a truncated misunderstanding of a brave speech, delivered under nervous circumstances. I have to insist that we must be better than this, because to so willfully mischaracterize his words is, at best, cruel.
Even crueler still when we realize that Glazer was the only person to call out the collective punishment being wrought over Palestine on Oscars night. Truly, out of all the winners, he was the only person on that stage over the course of the entire night to explicitly mention Gaza, all while hundreds of protesters outside of Dolby Theater called for a ceasefire. Why should doing the right thing be such an isolating experience?
The cognitive dissonance was almost too strong to handle, as it has been throughout this awards season. Oh, yes, there have been people wearing Artists4Ceasefire pins on red carpets, along with an Artists4Ceasefire letter signed by over 400 familiar names a few months ago. At the Oscars red carpet, Ramy Youssef and Mark Ruffalo called for a ceasefire; Swann Arlaud and Milo Machado-Graner from my beloved Anatomy of a Fall wore Palestinian flag pins. And this is good. Pins and letters and red carpet interviews add visibility, and that is important.
But it has been disappointing, if maybe not entirely surprising, to see the industry heavy-hitters take a backseat while those in earlier or more precarious stages of their careers — like Renee Rapp, who in her acceptance speech at last week's GLAAD Media Awards called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and Hunter Schafer, who last month attended and was arrested at a Jewish Voice for Peace protest in New York — take risks to stand on, with, and for their principles.
It would have made a difference to Melissa Barrera and Jonathan Glazer, for example, if they had the outspoken support of an established stalwart, someone (or several someones) whose reputation, power, and longevity in the industry would protect them from any significant retribution. Instead, in November Barrera was removed from the Scream franchise, and on Monday, a letter from over 450 original signatories was published denouncing Glazer's speech (as of the date of publication, the number of signatories had risen to nearly 1,000).
I am aware that 450 people is a relatively small subset of people. In addition to denouncing Glazer, the letter’s signatories decided to boldly claim, in March 2024, after over 30,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza, that the Israeli army is not targeting civilians — a claim so contrary to the growing mountain of evidence that it is difficult to take any contents of the letter seriously. And sure, in the grand scheme of Hollywood, 450 signatures is not too many, but within the overwhelming silence of industry leaders, a letter like this one finds room to echo.
As a reminder, calling for a ceasefire is not an unpopular stance. Far from it. It is a position held by a growing majority of Americans as we've borne witness to the collective punishment of Palestinians resulting in the death of over 30,000 people, including over 12,000 children; rampant food insecurity and an imminent famine; and the utter destruction of Gaza and its institutions. It should not require bravery to publicly support the end of a military intervention responsible for so much suffering, especially when it is in large part our (American) tax dollars making said suffering possible. And yet, for Glazer to mention and humanize the tens of thousands of Palestinian victims on the Oscars stage was a lonely and yes, brave endeavor.
It is ironic to me that such a large cohort of members of an industry so steeped in the power of collective action, the impact of which we just saw last year with the twin SAG-AFTRA and WGA labor strikes, are choosing to stay silent in the face of (1) the U.S.-funded atrocities taking place in Gaza and (2) their colleagues being punished for speaking out against said atrocities. Is it not embarrassing? To have a voice and a platform and influence and refuse to use it for anything other than selling movie tickets and promoting your make-up/skincare/tequila brands?
I know solidarity works, because even I, a very small fish in comparison to the artists speaking out, feel supported whenever fellow content creators/influencers/Internet People are also vocal in their call for a ceasefire. My purpose in saying this is not to center myself or even the Hollywood members in question, but to emphasize how critical it is to continue to use our voices and our platforms to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Because the more of us do so, the harder it is to silence us, and the closer we get to urging our leaders to do the same.
Correction: A previous version of this newsletter incorrectly stated that Jonathan Glazer called for a ceasefire in his Oscars acceptance speech. He did not do so explicitly.
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"Is it not embarrassing? To have a voice and a platform and influence and refuse to use it for anything other than selling movie tickets and promoting your make-up/skincare/tequila brands?" So well said! I know people say to not expect moral/political stances from celebrities, but that never sits right with me because aren't they involved in the realities of global conflict just as much as us "regular people" are?
Also, it's just very ironic and sad to me that so many of these producers/writers/actors will be a part of stories that are about revolution (i.e., the hunger games), telling the revolutionaries' perspective, and then be on the complete wrong side in real life.
Thank you for this, Clara. When I saw that people had denounced his speech I wondered if they had even heard/read it in its entirety?