Amid sinking ratings, the Oscar went to Hellboy III: Attack of the Social Justice Demons. There was so much virtue signaling there that it could have choked Harvey Weinstein, if he had been in attendance.
Jimmy Kimmel, whose only consistent trait is a consummate ability to remake his image into whatever he thinks will appeal to an audience, had made the journey from the Man Show to #MeToo. And who better to preside over the tributes of a hypocritical industry to the victims of sexual harassment than a compulsive hypocrite.
Dunkirk, arguably the greatest movie on the board, was shut out. The little golden statues went to forgettable leftist tripe. Gary Oldman's speech appeared to come from another era. One where the Oscars reflected something other than a cringing need to celebrate politically correct mediocrity or be ground under by social media mobs.
History was made. And it keeps being made at these increasingly forgettable ceremonies full of forgettable movies whose names no one can remember a year later.
Is anyone going to be watching The Shape of Water a year later, two or three?
Hollywood is going the way of the cinema of the Soviet Union. Its tributes to the politically correct shibboleths of the moment will be incomprehensible a decade from now. There is no future or past in the cultural revolution which is an eternal moment of transformative drama, but without future and past, there is no narrative and no art.
No history is being made here. The industry is rapidly becoming irrelevant. It's a technological breakthrough away from being disrupted out of history. And even before it's forgotten, it's forgetting itself.