Can art just be art?

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The Oscars is the biggest movie ceremony. However, Sunday's Academy Awards drew only 29.6 million viewers around the world, a mere increase from 2018.

The TV ratings for the Oscars have gone down, almost relentlessly in recent years.

On this issue, Joanne Cheng, a filmmaker and intercultural critic from Taiwan, said that the reason for this low turnout is largely due to the politicization of the show. "The Oscars are not a set for politics; instead, it is a set for art and science."

Although as celebrities, it is not abnormal for them to express their political perspectives. Their views on certain political issues sometimes can exert a positive effect. For example, in the 1970s, celebrities from Hollywood got involved in protesting the Vietnam War, expediting the end of the war.

However, this time, public figures on the Oscars stage seemed to go too far: they criticized the wall between the U.S. and Mexico and President Donald Trump ignoring the needs of immigrants.

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They just "do not have a check on reality," so they shouldn't be the ones to blame.

Prof. David Moser from Yen Ching Academy of Peking University agreed with Joanne Cheng, stating that politicization has polluted art.

Take the civil rights drama "Green Book," for example, which claimed the Best Picture award at the 2019 Oscars on Sunday.

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The film is based on a true story about a celebrated black pianist who befriends his white driver as they tour the segregated American South in the 1960s.

However, the film has generated a lot of controversy. Some people think it is "regressive since the movie portrayed a white savior complex."

So in their eyes, "the movie cannot just be an interesting art complex, it has to be a statement, and you have to stand on the left or right."

When talking about why Asia's voice has been absent from the Oscars, Prof. Teng Jimeng from Beijing Foreign Studies University said that the only reason for films from the region not winning any prize in the Oscars is because they are not good enough. Chinese filmmakers need to do more.

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