Trevor Noah, host of the Daily Show, introduced best picture candidate Black Panther by absurdly pretending to have known the movie\u2019s lead character T\u2019Challa.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Growing up as a young boy in Wakanda,\u2019 he said, \u2018I would see T\u2019Challa flying over our village and he would remind me of a great Xhosa phrase \u2018abelungi abazi uba ndiyaxoka\u2019 which means \u2018in times like these, we are stronger when we fight together than when we try to fight apart.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Trevor Noah. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n The funniest moment at last night\u2019s not very funny Oscars was entirely missed by 99% of the audience, when Trevor Noah pretended to say a phrase in\u00a0the Bantu language Xhosa<\/span><\/p>\n The star-studded crowd roared their approval.<\/span><\/p>\n Some punched the air.<\/span><\/p>\n A few wiped away imaginary tears.<\/span><\/p>\n Others hugged each other.<\/span><\/p>\n This was exactly the kind of stirring, unifying, inclusive message everyone had been directed to crave at the most politically correct Academy Awards in history.<\/span><\/p>\n But viewers in South Africa reacted rather differently.<\/span><\/p>\n Because what Noah actually said in Xhosa \u2013 the Bantu language related to Zulu \u2013 was this: \u2018White people don\u2019t know I\u2019m lying.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n I burst out laughing when I found out about this, hours after the event.<\/span><\/p>\n Which was truly ironic because I barely laughed once during the actual 3-hour ceremony.<\/span><\/p>\n Noah\u2019s very clever subliminal prank so perfectly epitomised what Hollywood has become \u2013 a place so terrified of laughing, at anything or anyone, that it\u2019s incarcerated itself inside a dour tomb of virtue-signalling \u2018wokeness\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n Had he said what those Xhosa words really meant, the same crowd cheering him would have crunched their faces (Botox permitting\u2026) into stony disapproving silence.<\/span><\/p>\n None of them would have wanted to be seen laughing at a joke that sounds even potentially racist.<\/span><\/p>\n We know this because that\u2019s exactly what happened when Noah DID tell a risqu\u00e9 race-tinged gag about Mel Gibson, notorious for unleashing a disgusting N-word tirade against his former girlfriend.<\/span><\/p>\n Joking about how everyone says \u2018Wakanda Forever\u2019 to him, as a homage to the Black Panther salute, Noah quipped: \u2018Even backstage Mel Gibson came up to me like \u201cWakanda Forever\u201d. He said another word after that but the Wakanda was nice.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n The cameras cut to three professional comediennes, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler, all of whom looked like Noah had just said he\u2019d killed all their pets.<\/span><\/p>\n When the camera cut to Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler in the audience after Noah made an off-color Mel Gibson job, none of them even smiled (they are shown backstage earlier here). Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n None of them was even cracking a half-smile, let alone laughing.<\/span><\/p>\n They couldn\u2019t be seen to find it funny lest someone somewhere might be offended.<\/span><\/p>\n What the hell has happened to Hollywood?<\/span><\/p>\n It used to be a town where inappropriate jokes were not just encouraged they were mandatory.<\/span><\/p>\n Bob Hope and Billy Crystal, who hosted the Oscars 27 times between them, littered their performances with near-the-knuckle jokes.<\/span><\/p>\n But that brand of humour all came to a crashing halt after Seth MacFarlane\u2019s hosting performance in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n The Family Guy creator was savaged for singing a song entitled \u2018We saw your boobs\u2019 about actresses who\u2019d gone topless in films, and for a series of other non-PC jokes about race, sexism, Jews, domestic violence and the Lincoln assassination.<\/span><\/p>\n It was all very sharp and funny, as befits a comedy genius, but MacFarlane\u2019s mistake was to host an awards show in an era and town that no longer tolerates sharp and funny jokes.<\/span><\/p>\n Since the faux-outrage that exploded, the Oscars has become ever more humourless, fuelled by the frenzied career wrecking trial-by-Twitter culture that has targeted anyone trying to be funny about anything.<\/span><\/p>\n This dreadful trend culminated in the recent and utterly inevitable Kevin Hart debacle in which a man who would have been a perfect and hilarious Oscars host was forced to step down because of controversial tweets he posted years ago and for which he had subsequently expressed regret.<\/span><\/p>\n The Academy reacted by announcing that this year\u2019s Oscars would have no host at all, presumably because nobody can reach the clean, moral, ethical, inoffensive joke bar that has now been established, short of Mother Teresa being brought back to life.<\/span><\/p>\n And so I watched last night\u2019s with a heavy, grim heart.<\/span><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t hate it.<\/span><\/p>\n In fact, I thought some of it was great \u2013 notably, Olivia Colman\u2019s gloriously ebullient Best Actress speech, Rami Malek\u2019s equally endearing response to winning Best Actor for his superb portrayal of Freddie Mercury, Spike Lee behaving in the same lunatic way he does courtside at New York Knicks games, and Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper\u2019s suspiciously sizzlingly intimate performance of Shallow.<\/span><\/p>\n But what it didn\u2019t do was make me laugh.<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, it dripped with insufferable identity politics, Trump-bashing, and a series of box ticking awards that smacked of Hollywood trying to make itself look as worthy and virtuous as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018I can\u2019t believe a film about menstruation won an Oscar\u2019 wept director Rayka Zehtabchi for her (powerful) film Period. End of Sentence.<\/span><\/p>\n Really?<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d have been more shocked if it hadn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n After all, the main winners last night were a film about a gay immigrant rock star, a film about a black superhero with an almost entirely black cast, a film about racial injustice in segregated U.S. South in the 1960s, a film about a black detective who goes undercover with the Ku Klux Klan \u2013 and Roma, a beautifully made but almost unwatchably dull, depressing and painfully slow black-and-white film about a Mexican maid, in Spanish with subtitles.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not disputing the individual merits of any of the winners, but it\u2019s hard not to avoid the conclusion that Hollywood \u2013 whose Academy voters are predominantly old white guys \u2013 is now doing everything in its power to avoid more of the \u2018White Oscars\u2019 backlashes of recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n Even the red carpet morphed into a \u2018woke\u2019 farce as Pose star Billy Porter turned up in a tuxedo-skirt, presumably to make himself the new poster person for gender fluidity.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018OMG! He\u2019s magnificent!\u2019 screamed Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n The red carpet morphed into a \u2018woke\u2019 farce as Pose star Billy Porter turned up in a tuxedo-skirt, presumably to make himself the new poster person for gender fluidity. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018OMG! He\u2019s ridiculous!\u2019 I screamed back.<\/span><\/p>\n In the end, the only real amusement came from watching people I\u2019d never heard of, and frankly was quite happy never to have heard of, making fools of themselves on stage during the seemingly endless tedious production categories.<\/span><\/p>\n The hapless trio from Vice who won the make-up and hair award made collectively the worst speech in Oscars history – a bumbling, stumbling, jabbering, linguistic fiasco that became the perfect evidential argument for sliding these kind of awards into commercial breaks, as was intended this year until a massive furore from \u2018the industry\u2019 forced the producers to do a U-turn.<\/span><\/p>\n But at least they were riveting, for all the wrong reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n When Green Book won Best Screenplay, one of the writers (and the movie\u2019s director) Peter Farrelly pulled out a sheet of paper and began dementedly reciting the names of what seemed like every single human being he\u2019d ever met.<\/span><\/p>\n I counted at least 40 people on his turgid list of mainly nonentities.<\/span><\/p>\n Important to him, I\u2019m sure \u2013 but utterly irrelevant to the billion people watching around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n Oh for a trap door that could have sucked him down into the bowels of the Kodak Theatre and spared us this orgy of self-indulgence.<\/span><\/p>\n And what about the ridiculous woman who made Free Solo, the extraordinary documentary about climber Alex Honnold? She barely mentioned the guy who actually risked his life for her bloody film, even as he stood three feet away from her on stage!<\/span><\/p>\n The single most depressing moment came with Awkwafina and John Mulaney, who were unfunny, boring and unctuously sycophantic.\u00a0Why wasn\u2019t Ricky Gervais there to rip into people instead of these fawning clowns?<\/p><\/div>\n But for me, the single most depressing moment came with presenting duo Awkwafina and John Mulaney, who were unfunny, boring and unctuously sycophantic.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018I want these people to like me to a degree that is embarrassing,\u2019 gushed Mulaney, and you could see he really meant it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Wait, why are we still here?\u2019 exclaimed Awkwafina, as they remained on stage to introduce a second award.<\/span><\/p>\n I asked myself the exact same question, with this supplementary: Why wasn\u2019t Ricky Gervais there to rip into people instead of these fawning clowns?<\/span><\/p>\n Yet today, I\u2019ve read many people raving about them and saying they were so \u2018hilarious\u2019 they should host the whole show next year.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Trevor-Noah.jpg\")
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