Oscars โwokefestโ has turned off viewers, say critics. Does the โDiCaprio effectโ on climate prove them wrong?
DiCaprio used his 2016 Oscars acceptance speech to say that climate change โis the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinatingโ
There has been much handwringing in Hollywood over the fate of the Oscars, which took place for the 94th time on Sunday amid much unscripted drama.
Last yearโs Academy Awards drew a dismal 10.4 million viewers, not even making the top 100 most watched TV broadcasts of 2021, amid years of waning interest. It remains to be seen whether 2022โs slimmed-down programme will fare any better.
Critics have cast blame in various directions. The awards have been condemned for their lack of diversity after all 20 acting nominations in 2015 and 2016 went to white actors, leading to the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.
A third pandemic year, and now Russiaโs brutal invasion of Ukraine, may have sapped a weary publicโs ability to care much for what happens in Tinseltown. As actor Seth Rogen told Insider recently: โI donโt care who wins the automobile awards. No other industry expects everyone to care about what awards they shower upon themselves. Maybe people just donโt care. Maybe they did for a while and they stopped caring. And why should they?โ
Others point to the Oscarsโ so-called โwokenessโ. The Academy Awards have long been used as a platform for causes, from Marlon Brandoโs protests for Native American rights and Vanessa Redgraveโs support for Palestine in the 1970s to more recently issues of MeToo, systemic racism, mass incarceration, LGBTQ rights, animal suffering and climate change.
Conservative publicationThe Spectator this week dubbed the Oscars โa snorefest of nonstop virtue signallingโ.
But at least a few high-profile instances offer a weighty counter argument to the claim that viewers switch off to issues aired in the glitzy setting. One such moment has been dubbed the โDiCaprio effectโ.
In his 2016 acceptance speech for Best Actor in The Revenant, Leonardo DiCaprio used about half of his allotted minutes to talk about the climate crisis.
โClimate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating,โ he said.
Cue eye rolls and grabbing the remote in response to platitudes from a jet-setting A-lister like DiCaprio โ even one with a long history of environmentalism and a dedicated foundation for climate issues.
And yet, big data had something different to say. According to one academic study, DiCaprioโs speech caused an immediate bounce in social media activity related to climate change.
The research team, led by Eric C. Leas and John W. Ayers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, analyzed Google, Twitter and news articles following Oscars night. They compared interest in climate change to two previous events โ the United Nationโs 2015 Conference of the Parties (COP), where the historic Paris Agreement was signed, and Earth Day.
While DiCaprioโs Oscars speech saw an insignificant increase in traditional news coverage, tweets and Google searches skyrocketed compared to those events.
โTweets including the terms โclimate changeโ or โglobal warmingโ reached record highs, increasing 636 [per cent]โฆ with more than 250,000 tweets the day DiCaprio spoke,โ the researchers wrote, far surpassing the daily average effect of COP and Earth Day.
Google activity was also dramatically higher: searches for โclimate changeโ or โglobal warmingโ increased 261 per cent and 210 per cent the day DiCaprio spoke, and remained higher for four more days, representing 104,190 and 216,490 searches.
Professor Leas told The Independent this week that it was a striking example of how people seeking out a social cause away from a top-down organised event, in what the researchers dubbed โorganic advocacyโ.
He also explained that there were direct links between what DiCaprio said, and what people searched.
โFor example, [DiCaprio] said something like climate change is going to affect indigenous people the most, and the word indigenous spiked. Whereas other things related to climate change, like carbon taxes or electric cars, he didnโt mention and they didnโt go up,โ Prof Leas said.
โIt gives a sense that if youโre clear with messaging, people are going to respond to that message.โ
Itโs not the only impact that has come directly from an Oscars speech. During her 2018 acceptance for Best Actress for the movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Frances McDormand set off a frenzy of Google searches after she finished her speech with the words โinclusion riderโ โ a contractual requirement that actors can ask for to ensure diversity in cast and crew.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary account later tweeted: โโInclusionโ is our top search on the night, followed by โcinematography,โ โin memoriam,โ โfeminism,โ and โrider.โโ
Inclusion riders have gained traction in Hollywood โ and beyond โ in the years since.
DiCaprioโs speech translated into real-world action may be more squishy, particularly since it deals with such a multifarious subject as climate change. โA lot of it is just about getting people to engage with the message,โ as Prof Leas pointed out.
However, a separate study conducted by his research team did show concrete action.
โWhen Charlie Sheen went on Good Morning America to talk about HIV, we showed the hour that he was on-air was the most Googled ever for HIV-related information,โ Prof Leas said. โLater, a pharmaceutical company for over-the-counter HIV testing kits reached out, and they also showed that sales for their product went up [at that time].โ
DiCaprioโs latest film Donโt Look Up โ a thinly-veiled climate change allegory which has smashed streaming records on Netflix - failed to win any of the four awards it was nominated for at Sundayโs Oscars.
Regardless, itโs debatable whether a plea like DiCaprioโs would still pierce through five years on, given the steady bombardment of climate disasters now visible to millions.
And while the A-List crowd vied for the Hollywood spotlight on Sunday, itโs the climate crisis which once again this week stole the show โ with a record-shattering early spring heat wave in California.
Source