Congratulations to Jonathan Glazer for replacing Sacheen Littlefeather as the face of the moral bankruptcy at the Oscars.
For those with better things to think about than the 1973 Academy Awards, Littlefeather was the Native American activist who was sent up in place of Marlon Brando to accept his Best Actor award for his role as Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.” She also lectured Americans about how we were all on stolen land.
Littlefeather’s speech has become a touchstone for all that is askew with the ethical compass of those who perceive themselves as our betters because they work in the world of make-believe.
Thankfully, 51 years after Littlefeather’s address, we had Glazer rambling about how his movie’s producers “refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked” due to Israel’s war against Hamas.
Glazer directed the loose film adaptation of Martin Amis’ novel “The Zone of Interest,” which was nominated for multiple awards and won for Best International Feature Film. “The Zone of Interest,” which is actually quite good, deals with the Holocaust, making his remarks doubly problematic.
“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst,” Glazer said during his speech, accompanied on stage by producers James Wilson and Len Blavatnik, according to Variety.
“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 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanization … How do we resist?”
He was interrupted twice by applause:
Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech for Best International Film for ‘THE ZONE OF INTEREST’ at the #Oscars pic.twitter.com/XNsMv0HDib
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) March 11, 2024
Not only has Glazer’s speech been ripped apart by social media, legacy media and actual Holocaust survivors, now it’s being ripped apart by those in the entertainment industry who aren’t prepared to “refute their Jewishness.”
“More than 450 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’ Oscar speech,” Variety reported Monday.
“We are Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals,” the letter read.
“We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the purpose of drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination.
“Every civilian death in Gaza is tragic. Israel is not targeting civilians,” the letter continued. “It is targeting Hamas. The moment Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders is the moment this heartbreaking war ends. This has been true since the Hamas attacks of October 7th.
“The use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years, and has been recognized as a state by the United Nations, distorts history.
“It gives credence to the modern blood libel that fuels a growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world, in the United States, and in Hollywood,” it concluded. “The current climate of growing antisemitism only underscores the need for the Jewish State of Israel, a place which will always take us in, as no state did during the Holocaust depicted in Mr. Glazer’s film.”
Those are powerful words, and this wasn’t just a from the short list of Hollywood conservatives — or lightweights in the business.
Should Glazer totally retract his Oscars speech?
Included were big names like Debra Messing (“Will and Grace”), Jennifer Jason Leigh (“Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “The Hateful Eight”), Julianna Margulies (“ER”), Brett Gelman (“Stranger Things,” “Fleabag”) and Broadway star Tovah Feldshuh.
Executives included Gary Barber and Gail Berman, directors included Eli Roth (“Cabin Fever,” “Hostel”) and Rod Lurie (“Resurrecting the Champ,” “Straw Dogs”), show creators included Amy Sherman-Palladino (“Gilmore Girls,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), and numerous union reps and producers.
While it’s unclear how the signatories came together, several who spoke to Variety about their decision to sign on expressed outrage over Glazer’s remarks on Israel and Hamas.
“There was no concern for how Jewish people are going to react to a speech like that … when not even our hostages are being mentioned, and it’s just incredibly hurtful, incredibly painful,” Gelman told the trade publication. “It’s truly baffling to me that people were choosing to be silent that night.”
Ilana Wernick, producer of “Modern Family,” likened the moment to another notorious incident in the annals of the Oscars.
“His words sounded eerily similar to Vanessa Redgrave’s infamous ‘Zionist hoodlum’ speech,” Wernick told Variety.
“Only this time there was no Paddy Chayefsky to stand up and say the right thing. Sadly, Jew hatred won the day. That’s why so many of us in the industry reached out to each other. It was a very sad, very scary night. Writing the letter wasn’t just cathartic for us. It’s something we had to do.”
Redgrave’s speech was unarguably a low point in Academy history.
During the 1978 awards, while accepting her award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in “Julia” — a movie about an anti-Nazi activist during the Hitler years — Redgrave used abhorrent language to defend her funding of a pro-Palestinian documentary, as The New York Times noted in a 2019 report.
“In the last few weeks you have stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threat of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums, whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world, and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression,” she said.
Chayefsky had won an Oscar the previous year for writing the screenplay of the biting, satirical “Network” and was on stage to present the Best Screenplay award when he addressed Redgrave’s comments later on:
“I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and a simple ‘Thank you’ would’ve sufficed,” he said, according to the Times.
He received an ovation from the audience, the Times noted.
There may not have been someone that brave two Sundays ago, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t going to be repercussions for Glazer’s abominable remarks. Maybe now, every bit of unconscionable leftist preening at the Oscars won’t bring to mind Littlefeather’s fatuous stand-in for Brando but instead Glazerr’s morally adrift remarks.
