All right, relax — I’m not writing about policy, or anything regarding him as a president. Sorry for the clickbait headline, but hey, gotta pay the bills.

On Tuesday morning, our commander-in-chief sent out a tweet, as we can always count on him to do, that read:

Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY. Problem is, we don’t have Stars anymore – except your President (just kidding, of course)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 6, 2018

Now, while the vast majority of the content from this Twitter account is nonsense, I actually think Trump hit on some very real points here, in his usual effective and concise style.

Let’s not beat around the bush: These actually were the lowest-rated Oscars in history. Those numbers are true, and it wasn’t even close. Only 26.5 million people watched the show this year, down from the 32.9 people who watched last year, which itself was a nine-year low. Something is certainly going on, and I think the POTUS might actually have something to do with it.

Trump says “we don’t have Stars anymore,” and I find it hard to argue with him here. When you look at the actors who won Oscars this year, we have Frances McDormand, Gary Oldman, Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney.

Yes, they all gave incredible, award-worthy performances this year, but who is tuning in to see these people? Does the average American really care about the fact that Janney had won seven Emmy awards prior to this film role? Most people just know Oldman as Sirius Black.

This point is made again when we look at the big segment of the Oscars telecast, when Jimmy Kimmel took a group of movie stars to surprise a screening of “A Wrinkle in Time.” Let’s look at the group he took in: Gal Gadot, Ansel Elgort, Margot Robbie, Mark Hamill, Guillermo del Toro, Emily Blunt, Lupita Nyong’o, Armie Hammer and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Kimmel was bringing Hollywood’s brightest stars into the theater, and this is the best he could do? Even when I was watching the telecast, I was actually worried the crowd would not recognize these celebrities.

Yes, we know Ansel Elgort from a few movies, but does the average American know his name? I don’t think so. Everyone surely knows Wonder Woman, but without the garb, do they know my favorite Israel Defense Forces soldier Gal Gadot? Same goes for Luke Skywalker and Hamill. Even I don’t know if I’d recognize Hamill if I saw him on the street. And I love “Hamilton,” but even that has its limits for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s popularity.

Ansel Elgort starred in the film “Baby Driver,” which put him on Hollywood’s radar but Screen Time columnist Erik Benjamin questions whether that is enough to rank him alongside film legends.

This group didn’t have a Tom Cruise, a Julia Roberts, a Tom Hanks or a Reese Witherspoon. Hollywood is moving away from a star system and toward an intellectual property system.
We go to the movies now to see characters, and if the person playing that character happens to be someone we like, that’s great.

Need proof? Jennifer Lawrence, likely the biggest woman movie star today — if not the biggest overall — headlined a movie this weekend that couldn’t even crack $20 million. People are simply not attracted to stars like they used to be, so the promise of celebrities at the Oscars isn’t enough to get people to tune in. You need recognizable films for people to root for, and while “Get Out” and “Dunkirk” were financial smashes, those two alone were not enough to draw the big ratings.

Now, let’s move on to the second part of Trump’s tweet, where he says the only real star we have is our president. While he says he’s kidding, I actually don’t think it’s a laughable statement.

Trump has captured the zeitgeist in a way I’d argue no person ever — president or not — really has. When he says something, people respond. Case in point: Kimmel literally responded to his tweet, writing “Thanks, lowest rated President in HISTORY.”

This president has reached a level of fame in the United States where he’s not only recognized, but is virtually at the center of American life. So many of us now look at movie stars as not only mainstream figures, but people who can use their fame to fight for or against Trump. We view them in relation to our president, which truly makes him the only star around.

Let’s take Meryl Streep, likely the best film actor of our generation and maybe all time, who has been the object of Trump’s wrath. There’s a good chance your feelings of Streep align with your vote in the 2016 presidential election. While all the talk of “out-of-touch liberal Hollywood” can sound like your grandparents complaining, there’s something to be said that certain audiences fundamentally will not connect to Hollywood in a way they once would.

These Oscars were historically low-rated, and when you look at the nominees and movies, we really shouldn’t be surprised. The crop of nominees were fantastic, but they were quirky art films that didn’t capture the general audiences of the U.S., even when you consider the financial successes of “Dunkirk” and “Get Out.”

There was no rallying cry for everyday Americans to turn the broadcast on, and so they didn’t. When it comes down to it, not everyone cares what Kimmel has to say about Trump, but boy, do we want to know what Trump has to say about Kimmel.

Erik Benjamin is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at ebenjami@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @cokezeriksugar.

Published on March 7, 2018 at 12:31 am