Children’s cinema is conservative – and brilliant | 14 February 2018

The Oscars promise to be truly unbearable this year, with vomit-inducing levels of sanctimony followed by the usual gibberish from the commentariat. The results and speeches and even clothes will be subject to endless politicised scrutiny, and whatever the film industry does to stay Woke, the Buzzfeed headline will inevitably be ‘and people aren’t happy about it’.

I’m not sure actors really appreciate how their moralising, once simply tedious, is now grotesque; how there’s something almost darkly funny about members of the film industry presenting themselves as an ethical authority on anything, now they’ve been exposed as modern-day Borgias. But even before the Weinstein scandal broke there was something quite sad about how the entertainment industry tried to present itself as a sort of Confessing Church against the Trump presidency, the moral conscience of America, with Robert De Niro, Lady Gaga, Madonna and Miley Cyrus as modern-day Martin Niemöllers.

The thing about the Borgias is that, whatever their shortcomings as people – and admittedly they weren’t perfect – they did at least help produce great art.