On Sunday night, Moonlight shocked America by defeating heavily favored Best Picture contender La La Land. It won for one simple reason: intersectionality. Those in Hollywood decided that intersectionality should defeat Hollywood s self-aggrandizement this year. And this is how you know Hollywood is dying: They reward stories that appeal only to themselves, and reassure themselves of their importance every single year, either by making movies telling them how important they are, or by taking on the issue of the day in after-school special fashion. It doesn t make for good entertainment, which is why TV, which actually tells stories rather than getting hung up on the self-important nonsense of the movie industry, now outranks the movie business in terms of quality. Ben Shapiro breaks down everything that happened on Oscar night, and why it s no coincidence that an Oscars ceremony that opened with Kimmel tweaking President Trump ended with the Academy giving the Best Picture Oscar to Brokeback in Inner City Miami. Ben Shapiro is a writer and host of the podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and is a regular contributor at The Weekly Standard. He's also the host of "The Weekly Standard" and hosts the show "The View From The Top" on SiriusXM Radio's "Your Day Off" and "The Rachel Maddow Show." He's a frequent contributor for the New York Times, NPR, and the Hollywood Reporter. and a host of other media outlets. He can be reached at ben.shaperson@whatiwatched.co.nz and is on the air at 888-803-14131313. You can also become a Friend of The Ben Shapiro on social media by using the hashtag . and Ben Shapiro can be found on Insta: on Instapaper and Insta-Reeves on insta-lycie and Instapreneurs on . He also can be heard on The FiveThirtyEight on the Four Corners Podcast on , and on The Six Sigma , and The Six Degrees of Political Correctness on AIM, and The Five Things You Need to Know About Ben Shapiro: . Thanks for listening to Ben Shapiro's work on The Ben's Show. Ben's new book is out now: Ben's New Book is out on Amazon Prime Video is out! Subscribe to Ben's newest book is Out! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Podchaser and Subscribe on Itunes
00:00:14.000It's interesting in the way that all character studies are kind of interesting.
00:00:17.000It's a look at a place and at a time and at a person, but it doesn't truly uplift or soar or actually do much of anything.
00:00:23.000It won because the Academy voters preferred not to hear another year of griping about hashtag Oscars so white, and because those same voters could feel good about supposedly slapping Donald Trump in the face with diversity.
00:00:33.000It's no coincidence that an Oscars ceremony that opened with Kimmel tweaking President Trump, remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars was racist?
00:00:41.000Ended with the Academy giving the Best Picture Oscar to Brokeback Inner City Miami.
00:00:45.000This isn't to say there can't be a great movie made about a black gay coming-of-age story.
00:01:21.000Instead of Zero Dark Thirty or Lincoln.
00:01:23.000In 2005, Hollywood had its biggest PC off in a Best Picture fight between Brokeback Mountain, Crash, and Munich.
00:01:29.000Capote was actually a better picture than all of those three.
00:01:31.000One of the reasons Hollywood no longer rakes in the big bucks other than on tentpole features is that it sees only the profound movies as those that center on intersectional concerns, upholding the virtue of identity politics or the importance of art itself, rather than movies that tell people stories that they want to see.
00:01:47.000La La Land is a far better, more watchable movie than Moonlight, but there were at least three other movies that were better than either this year.
00:01:53.000Hell or High Water, Arrival, and Hacksaw Ridge, and all three were nominated.
00:01:56.000That doesn't include what I thought was the most entertaining flick of the year, 10 Cloverfield Lane.
00:02:00.000Unfortunately for those pictures, they weren't concerned with black gay children or the wonders of Hollywood.
00:02:04.000If somebody ever makes a movie about a half-black, half-Native American bisexual transgender trying to make his or her way in Hollywood, you can hand them the Oscar right now.
00:02:12.000And this is how you know Hollywood is dying.
00:02:14.000Instead of telling particular stories with general appeal, Hollywood tells stories that appeal only to themselves.
00:02:19.000They reassure themselves of their importance every single year, either by making movies telling them how important they are, or by making movies trying to show how important they are by taking on the issue of the day in after-school special fashion.
00:02:31.000It doesn't make for good entertainment, which is why TV, which actually tells stories rather than getting hung up on the self-important nonsense of the movie industry, now outranks the movie industry in terms of quality.
00:02:47.000So we'll talk everything Oscars in just a minute.
00:02:49.000We will also be talking about the Democrats picking a new leader and what you need to know about Tom Perez, that new leader.
00:02:55.000But first, we have to say thank you to our sponsors over at My Patriot Supply.
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00:04:35.000Okay, so, we can jump right into the Oscars.
00:04:38.000So, the big winner at the Oscars last night was not Moonlight.
00:04:40.000The big winner at the Oscars last night was Donald Trump.
00:04:43.000That was the big winner at the Oscars last night, because Donald Trump basically could sit there and watch Hollywood make a mockery of itself.
00:04:50.000Sally Cohn, one of my favorite people on the left of MSNBC and CNN fame, you remember her, hands up don't shoot, Sally Cohn tweeted out right before the Oscars that she hoped every single speech was political.
00:05:00.000To which I tweeted, so does every Republican in the country.
00:05:03.000We all want every speech to be political.
00:05:05.000Because the more political these speeches are, the better off Republicans are, because watching all of these
00:05:11.000All of these sort of comforted, rich, limousine liberal socialists ripping on America is really something that off-puts a lot of voters, and people react to that by voting for people on the Republican side of the aisle.
00:05:24.000Hollywood has never driven people into the arms of the Democrats, except through kind of their subtle cultural moments, but they don't drive people into the arms of the Democrats by just shouting about how terrible Republicans are.
00:05:33.000This is something that Hollywood gets wrong.
00:05:38.000That stuff can help convince people that Democrats are right.
00:05:40.000But it doesn't convince people Democrats are right when Marlon Brando sends up Sachin Littlefeather at the Oscars in 1973, a Native American spokeswoman, to pick up his award and rant and rave about how America's means to the Native Americans.
00:05:51.000Nobody voted Democrat because of that.
00:05:53.000And nobody voted Democrat in 2003 because Michael Moore got up at the Oscars and talked about the fictional president, George W. Bush, getting us into a fictional war.
00:06:01.000Hollywood people think that we want to hear what they have to say.
00:06:04.000We want to hear the stories they have to tell, but we don't actually want to hear the things they have to say because the things they have to say are generally stupid.
00:06:09.000They don't know anything about politics, so why in the world would we listen to them when it comes to politics?
00:06:14.000But again, Hollywood doesn't know that, so instead what Hollywood does is they think that we're watching because we want to hear their opinions on politics.
00:06:20.000So Jimmy Kimmel just couldn't help himself.
00:06:22.000He opened up with a bunch of jokes about Trump.
00:06:24.000And it was joke after joke about Donald Trump and how terrible Trump was, and look how wonderful we are, and we love Meryl Streep, and Meryl Streep's the best, because she made fun of Donald Trump that one time at some ceremony, and yeah, we love her, and sure, she was in a really crappy movie, Florence Foster Jenkins, that nobody ever saw, but it doesn't matter, because Meryl Streep, guys, Meryl Streep.
00:06:41.000So, yeah, he does all of these jokes in a row about Donald Trump, and we're all supposed to sit there and be like, yeah, this is great, yeah!
00:06:48.000The real reaction is, can you guys get over yourselves, please?
00:06:51.000Really, this is the best that you can do?
00:06:53.000These are your best jokes about Donald Trump, calling him racist?
00:06:55.000And calling, presumably, the people who voted for him racist?
00:06:58.000That's a great way to alienate an audience that's already not watching any of your Best Picture nominees.
00:07:02.000Nothing that was nominated for Best Picture this year did well at the box office.
00:07:05.000I think the only exception, as far as a movie that did well at the box office, was Arrival.
00:07:10.000I'm not aware of any other movie that was nominated for Best Picture this year that did over $100 million in business.
00:07:14.000Did Arrival end up doing $100 million in business?
00:07:45.000Um, but Viola Davis, who was, I thought she was fantastic in Suicide Squad.
00:07:48.000That's why I thought that she had to win.
00:07:50.000So was that guy who, like, shot fire from his fingers and everything.
00:07:52.000Anyway, Viola Davis, she gets up and she gives this speech.
00:07:55.000We're the only profession, the only one, that celebrates what it means to live a life?
00:08:00.000So I was complaining before this show started today that I'm kind of tired.
00:08:04.000You know the reason I'm kind of tired today?
00:08:05.000Because my wife has woken up the last several mornings at 4 o'clock in the morning to go into the hospital because she is a doctor and she's in her residency, which means she's getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning to help people who in some cases are terminally ill.
00:08:17.000Clearly the only profession that cares about living a life, that honors and celebrates living a life, is Hollywood.
00:08:22.000And it's so just, bleh, when Viola Davis says stuff like this, the fact is, the vast majority of people in the United States work jobs where they're helping each other live better lives.
00:08:32.000But the artists have to pat themselves on the back, and this is what I was saying at the very beginning, the artists in Hollywood have to make themselves feel important one of two ways, because otherwise they're just reading lines for a living and wearing funny costumes.
00:08:41.000So they have to make themselves feel important in one of two ways.
00:09:00.000Because it's either important to you or it's not important to you, but I don't have to preach how important what I do is to you, because you'll decide for yourself.
00:09:06.000And I think that's true for the vast majority of people.
00:09:08.000When you call a plumber, he doesn't show up to your house and go, you know what?
00:09:11.000It's really important I fix your toilet today.
00:09:13.000I'm the guy who stands between you and crap running over your floor.
00:09:19.000But the artist community, because they understand that people sort of see them as frivolous, they feel the necessity to go out and talk about how special they are all the time.
00:09:44.000You know, art is wonderful, it's enriching, it can connect us to each other, but the utter arrogance, the true arrogance of saying the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life, I mean, that's really astounding.
00:09:59.000I mean, they actually put together the funeral arrangements where we remember people.
00:10:03.000There's also something that's really, it's really high-handed about saying that only the lives we choose to honor in Hollywood are the important ones, right?
00:10:37.000Your life doesn't end when your life ends unless Viola Davis exhumes you and makes a story about you, you know, that's not even real, right?
00:10:44.000Unless a fictional story about a person who never existed.
00:10:47.000No, what actually makes your life important is the friends and family around you and the way you impact the world in a better way and the way that you do honorable things for friends and neighbors and make the world a better place.
00:10:55.000That's how you make the world a better place.
00:10:57.000There are a lot of people who are remembered who are really evil.
00:10:59.000That doesn't make them more important.
00:11:02.000Being remembered by people who actually matter is, I think, more important than Viola Davis remembering you.
00:11:07.000And the idea that Hollywood is what confers value on people is really kind of gross.
00:11:11.000I mean, another element of this, and some people liked it, some people hated it, I didn't like it, was Jimmy Kimmel did this routine where he ushered in a bunch of people off the Hollywood tour bus directly into the Oscars, and here's what it looked like.
00:11:21.000See, the whole point of this little shtick here is to demonstrate just how special Hollywood is.
00:11:25.000It's so special that you can bring people in off the street, and then you can show them just how magical Hollywood is.
00:11:29.000I mean, look at all these important people.
00:11:31.000And look at all these ne'er-do-well rubes, you know, just walking out.
00:11:43.000See, what would have been great, honestly, and what would have been funnier, is if Kimmel had, before this, taken a bunch of the stars to visit people on their actual jobs.
00:11:50.000They make movies about these actual jobs.
00:11:54.000It would be really funny to take Chris Pine, for example, in Hell or High Water, and take him to an oil derrick, and show him the people working in oil derrick, right?
00:12:02.000Or it would be really funny to take Nicole Kidman and take her down to the local plumber's union and have her see what people are actually doing over there.
00:12:08.000Because that would have said, okay, look, we're Hollywood and we know what we do is kind of frivolous and it brings meaning to some people, but