Awards shows have been extra political this season, for obvious reasons, and it’s enough to turn off certain viewers.
The Hollywood Reporter surveyed a group of 800 U.S. voters this February about film and politics and found that 66% of Trump supporters “turned off their TV sets because of an actor giving a political speech at the podium, compared to just 19 percent of Clinton voters.”
So Trump supporters probably didn’t like when Meryl Streep criticized Rita Repulsa’s long-lost orange-flavored cousin at the Golden Globes, or when David Harbour encouraged people to punch Nazis.
According to THR, “even if they don’t hit the off button, 44 percent of Trump voters find awards speeches ‘too political.’” Among the people surveyed who voted for Clinton, however, 43 percent would like some mention of Trump’s idiocy in acceptance speeches. There is some level of consensus in that “neither side finds Oscar acceptance speeches particularly convincing: Only about a quarter of respondents on both sides of the political fence said their opinion about an issue has ever been changed by an awards show.” Well, duh.
The survey suggests, in short, that Trump voters, much like their leader, want people to shut up about Trump unless they have something nice to say :). For every eloquent Mahershala Ali speech, there’s a Tom Hiddleston who makes us cringe. Sunday’s Oscars broadcast will be the last of it for now.