Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar Speech Is Latest In Long Line Of Academy Award Political Controversies – A Look Back
deadline.comWith the industry names signing on to a letter growing to reportedly a near 1,000 (and counting) condemning The Zone ff Interest director Jonathan Glazer‘s very controversial Oscar acceptance speech, it looks to be taking on a life of its own since the March 10 Academy Awards, where his universally praised movie won the Best International Film Oscar and was nominated for four others including Best Picture.
The speech — in which he seemed, to many at least, to compare Israel’s war on Gaza and the deaths of thousands of Palestinians with the Nazis’ extermination of Jews during World War II — certainly made some in the audience uncomfortable, even uncertain just how to interpret it at the time.
It has ignited a firestorm of protest by many, including big names and Academy members like Amy Pascal, Sherry Lansing, Eli Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh and more.
What appears to be the most offending comments came when the British director, while stressing that his film was about the extreme danger of “dehumanization” and where it can lead, seemed to be denouncing his own “Jewishness” in the reading of what he was saying. “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. … Whether the victims of Oct.
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