Arts & Entertainment
Kevin Hart steps aside as 2019 Oscar host after protests
In the age of #MeToo, a controversial host is toast
Kevin Hart. (Photo Facebook)
UPDATE: Comedian and actor Kevin Hart says he has stepped down from hosting the 2019 Oscars following a controversy over homophobic tweets and comments from his stand up act from as far back as 2009.
Hart said he does not wish to be a distraction and that he is “sorry he had hurt people” after calls for the Academy to drop him went viral.
Hart had said hosting the Oscars was “a goal on my list for a long time.”
On Thursday, Hart initially responded to outcry over his being named by the Academy as host of the ceremony with a video posted on Instagram, in which he said, “Guys, I’m nearly 40 years old. If you don’t believe that people change, grow, evolve as they get older, I don’t know what to tell you. If you want to hold people in a position where they always have to justify the past, do you. I’m the wrong guy, man.”
This was followed later on Thursday evening with another video, in which the comedian told followers the Academy had called him and offered him an ultimatum: apologize for the tweets or step down as host. He refused to apologize, saying he had “addressed this several times. This is not the first time this has come up. I’ve addressed it. I’ve spoken on it.”
Finally, late in the day, Hart announced via Twitter that he had chosen to step down “because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists.”
“I sincerely apologise to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words of the past,” he said.
I’m sorry that I hurt people.. I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart. Much love & appreciation to the Academy. I hope we can meet again.
— Kevin Hart (@KevinHart4real) December 7, 2018
As its much-criticized (and now recanted) decision to add a “Best Popular Film” category to its awards roster earlier this year clearly revealed, the Oscars are desperate to increase their ever-declining ratings.
Has the Academy Award lost its way? That question is increasingly being asked.
For the broadcast of the Academy Awards’ 90th annual ceremony in 2018, viewership was about 26.5 million people – around 20% lower than the previous year, it was the first time the figure had dropped below 30 million and the lowest number since Nielsen started tracking Oscar ratings in 1974.
The Hart fiasco was born of a reckless effort to boost its relevance and regain audience.
At first glance, it seemed like the perfect solution to their problem. Hart is immensely popular, performing to sell-out crowds in huge venues like the 69,000-seat Lincoln Financial Field in his hometown of Philadelphia. He topped Forbes’ 2016 list of the highest-paid comedians, and he’s proven his appeal to movie crowds with box-office hits, like this year’s “Night School” and “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.”
His films have grossed $3.5 billion worldwide, and his social media presence (35 million followers on Twitter, 65 million on Instagram) is impressive. The chance to see what he does as an Oscar host obviously had the potential to draw a lot of viewers that wouldn’t normally tune in.
In addition, Hart had been vocal about his desire to host the Oscars for several years now.
It’s a job that has proven thankless for many celebrities who have done it in the past – from Chevy Chase to David Letterman to Seth McFarlane, the ceremony has been fronted by a long list of popular comedians who were deemed to have failed spectacularly, and there’s an even longer list of personalities who have been asked and turned it down (as detailed in a recent piece by the Hollywood Reporter).
But Hart had actively been after the gig since at least 2015, when the Los Angeles Times reported him as saying, “If I can start the campaign now and get them into it, I’m all for it. I would just jump at the opportunity.”
Lastly, as only the fourth African-American person ever to host the ceremony (following Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, and four-time host Whoopi Goldberg), Hart would potentially have helped to smooth over the lingering criticism stemming from the #OscarsSoWhite controversy of two years ago, when the lack of diversity among the Academy’s award nominations – and onstage at its ceremony – underscored the inadequate representation of non-whites within the content produced by the Hollywood film industry. In a year when most of the apparent front-runners seem, yet again, to be white, having a black host might be a way to stave off any resurgence of backlash.
Unfortunately, this solution failed to take into account the messaging it sent on another front.
The Academy – in typically tone-deaf fashion – may have chosen a host who checks off several important boxes for image-conscious Hollywood, but in doing so it ignored Hart’s problematic history of homophobia.
And as you can see from the Instagram post above, Hart is now positioning himself as a victim of PC culture run amok.
It’s not all that different from the notorious comedy routine for his 2010 TV special, “Seriously Funny,” Hart joked that as a parent, “one of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay.” After quickly adding that he had “nothing against gay people,” he went on to say that “as a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will.” He went on to joke that every kid has a “gay moment… but when it happens, you gotta nip it in the bud.”
In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Hart confessed that he “wouldn’t tell the joke today.” His reasons, however, had nothing to do with the obvious anti-gay bias involved; instead, he deflected by saying, “the times weren’t as sensitive as they are now. I think we love to make big deals out of things that aren’t necessarily big deals, because we can. These things become public spectacles. So why set yourself up for failure?”
He also responded in an interview with Parade, by saying, “I had one gay joke in my career and it was about my son at a birthday party, and it was before things got as PC as they are now.”
In other words, his only remorse was over how it affected his image.
Blaming the current #MeToo movement for creating this atmosphere is not a show of remorse. Neither is saying it’s something he’s sorry about while he keeps doing it.
Apparently, that remorse has not been strong enough to keep him from making more homophobic comments. His Twitter feed has been laced with them throughout his career – things like “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughter’s doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head % say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay.’”
In one particularly offensive tweet, he called out another Twitter user by saying their profile picture looked “like a gay billboard for AIDS.”
He has repeatedly used phrases like “no homo” and “no homo gay,” and lambasted his critics by calling them such names as “f*g boy,” “gay face,” “fat faced f*g,” and “man bitch.”
According to an article published by Queerty just this morning, Hart had been deleting many of these posts – most of which had already been re-Tweeted in protest by thousands of Twitter users after news broke of his Oscar gig.
There’s also the matter of his treatment of ex-wife Torrei Hart, to whom he admitted being physically abusive in his 2017 memoir, “I Can’t Make This Up.” He also confessed in a radio interview last year to having cheated on his current wife, Eniko Parrish, just a few months earlier – while she was pregnant.
With LGBTQ-focused films like “Boy Erased” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” predicted to be in the running, as well as “A Star Is Born,” which features gay icon Lady Gaga, this year’s Oscars are shaping up to have a strong queer presence. With this in mind, placing Hart in the center of the proceedings – when his long track record of homophobic remarks was already well-documented and should have been taken into account by the Academy before offering him the job – was always a bad idea.
Whether or not the comedian really believes the homophobic viewpoints he has projected in his comedy – which, for the record, he has repeatedly insisted he does not – his selection as host sent a mixed message from the Academy to its membership and to its millions of avid followers, many of whom are either LGBTQ or allies.
It’s not the first time the organization has faced this issue. In 2011, Brett Ratner was forced to resign as producer of that year’s Oscar ceremony due to his record of homophobic slurs.
As for the Hart debacle, the Academy has yet to issue a statement.
Theater
José Zayas brings ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ to GALA Hispanic Theatre
Gay Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca wrote masterpiece before 1936 execution
‘The House of Bernarda Alba’
Through March 1
GALA Hispanic Theatre
3333 14th St., N.W.
$27-$52
Galatheatre.org
In Federico García Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba,” now at GALA Hispanic Theatre in Columbia Heights, an impossibly oppressive domestic situation serves, in short, as an allegory for the repressive, patriarchal, and fascist atmosphere of 1930s Spain
The gay playwright completed his final and arguably best work in 1936, just months before he was executed by a right-wing firing squad. “Bernarda Alba” is set in the same year, sometime during a hot summer in rural Andalusia, the heart of “España profunda” (the deep Spain), where traditions are deeply rooted and mores seldom challenged.
At Bernarda’s house, the atmosphere, already stifling, is about to get worse.
On the day of her second husband’s funeral, Bernarda Alba (superbly played by Luz Nicolás), a sixtyish woman accustomed to calling the shots, gathers her five unmarried daughters (ages ranging from 20 to 39) and matter-of-factly explain what’s to happen next.
She says, “Through the eight years of mourning not a breeze shall enter this house. Consider the doors and windows as sealed with bricks. That’s how it was in my father’s house and my grandfather’s. Meanwhile, you can embroider your trousseaux.”
It’s not an altogether sunny plan. While Angustias (María del Mar Rodríguez), Bernarda’s daughter from her first marriage and heiress to a fortune, is betrothed to a much younger catch, Pepe el Romano, who never appears on stage, the remaining four stand little chance of finding suitable matches. Not only are they dowry-less, but no men, eligible or otherwise, are admitted into their mother’s house.
Lorca is a literary hero known for his mastery of both lyrical poetry and visceral drama; still, “Bernarda Alba’s” plotline might suit a telenovela. Despotic mother heads a house of adult daughters. Said daughters are churning with passions and jealousies. When sneaky Martirio (Giselle Gonzáles) steals the photo of Angustias’s fiancé all heck kicks off. Lots of infighting and high drama ensue. There’s even a batty grandmother (Alicia Kaplan) in the wings for bleak comic relief.
At GALA, the modern classic is lovingly staged by José Zayas. The New York-based out director has assembled a committed cast and creative team who’ve manifested an extraordinarily timely 90-minute production performed in Spanish with English subtitles easily ready seen on multiple screens.
In Lorca’s stage directions, he describes the set as an inner room in Bernarda’s house; it’s bright white with thick walls. At GALA, scenic designer Grisele Gonzáles continues the one-color theme with bright red walls and floor and closed doors. There are no props.
In the airless room, women sit on straight back chairs sewing. They think of men, still. Two are fixated on their oldest siter’s hunky betrothed. Only Magdelena (Anna Malavé), the one sister who truly mourns their dead father, has given up on marriage entirely.
The severity of the place is alleviated by men’s distant voices, Koki Lortkipanidze’s original music, movement (stir crazy sisters scratching walls), and even a precisely executed beatdown choreographed by Lorraine Ressegger-Slone.
In a short yet telling scene, Bernarda’s youngest daughter Adela (María Coral) proves she will serve as the rebellion to Bernarda’s dictatorship. Reluctant to mourn, Adela admires her reflection. She has traded her black togs for a seafoam green party dress. It’s a dreamily lit moment (compliments of lighting designer Hailey Laroe.)
But there’s no mistaking who’s in charge. Dressed in unflattering widow weeds, her face locked in a disapproving sneer, Bernarda rules with an iron fist; and despite ramrod posture, she uses a cane (though mostly as a weapon during one of her frequent rages.)
Bernarda’s countenance softens only when sharing a bit of gossip with Poncia, her longtime servant convincingly played by Evelyn Rosario Vega.
Nicolás has appeared in “Bernarda Alba” before, first as daughter Martirio in Madrid, and recently as the mother in an English language production at Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh. And now in D.C. where her Bernarda is dictatorial, prone to violence, and scarily pro-patriarchy.
Words and phrases echo throughout Lorca’s play, all likely to signal a tightening oppression: “mourning,” “my house,” “honor,” and finally “silence.”
As a queer artist sympathetic to left wing causes, Lorca knew of what he wrote. He understood the provinces, the dangers of tyranny, and the dimming of democracy. Early in Spain’s Civil War, Lorca was dragged to the the woods and murdered by Franco’s thugs. Presumably buried in a mass grave, his remains have never been found.
Cupid’s Undie Run, an annual fundraiser for neurofibromatosis (NF) research, was held at Union Stage and at The Wharf DC on Saturday, Feb. 21.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Sweat DC is officially expanding to Shaw, opening a new location at 1818 7th St., N.W., on Saturday, March 28 — and they’re kicking things off with a high-energy, community-first launch event.
To celebrate, Sweat DC is hosting Sweat Fest, a free community workout and social on Saturday, March 14, at 10 a.m. at the historic Howard Theatre. The event features a group fitness class, live DJ, local food and wellness partners, and a mission-driven partnership with the Open Goal Project, which works to expand access to youth soccer for players from marginalized communities.
For more details, visit Sweat DC’s website and reserve a spot on Eventbrite.
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