The Oscars have always been political, but this year, it promises to be one of the most politically charged awards shows in recent memory. It arrives at a time when the White House's dismantling of DEI programs and mass deportation raids have sent a ripple effect through all facets of American life, including Hollywood.
This is why the Dolby Theater, home to the 97th annual Academy Awards, will be the stage for two competing visions of America: one in which artists, not politicians, shape the culture and another in which the presidency seeks to define it.
At the center of it all is Netflix's cartel musical Emilia Pérez, the most nominated film at this year's Oscars. Directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard and loosely based on Boris Razon's 2018 novel Écoute, the film follows a feared Mexican cartel leader, played by Spanish trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón, who orchestrates their own disappearance to transition and start a new life as a woman.
Lauded by festivals for its artistic vision but criticized by others for misrepresenting Mexican culture, Emilia Pérez has become a lightning rod at the intersection of art and politics. If Karla Sofía Gascón, the film's star, becomes the first openly trans actress to win an Oscar, or if the film takes Best Picture as the first Spanish-language film to do so, it would be a direct rebuttal to a White House actively targeting transgender rights and undocumented Mexican immigrants.
The Merging of Politics and Pop Culture
This tension between culture and politics, Hollywood and Washington, is nothing new. Politicians have leveraged pop culture to tap into passionate fan bases and cultural conversations to gain clout for decades. At the same time, celebrities have used their platforms to inspire and shape policy from afar. But today, we're witnessing a complete collapse of those fiefdoms, where the distinction between the two has all but vanished.
Take, for instance, President Donald Trump's recent ousting of the Kennedy Center's leadership and assuming a 'tastemaker-in-chief' role, serving as the new chairman of America's premier cultural institution, in an attempt to dictate what kind of art is deemed 'American.'
Further blurring the lines between art and politics is the possibility of actor Sebastian Stan winning a Best Actor Oscar for portraying Trump in the film, The Apprentice while Trump himself watches from the White House. It's surreal, meta-commentary at the moment we're living in, where politics is entertainment and entertainment is politics, making it impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Award Shows as Political Stages
Meanwhile, award shows like the Oscars, Grammys, and Kennedy Center Honors double as political stages for artists looking to speak truth to power. Jane Fonda, for instance, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards and delivered a speech calling for resistance against divisive politics, saying, "Empathy is not weak or woke... woke just means you give a damn about other people."
Similarly, Richard Gere was recently honored with the International Award at the 2025 Goya Awards in Spain. In his acceptance speech, he criticized the political climate in the United States, referring to President Donald Trump as a "bully" and a "thug" and stating that the U.S. is "in a very dark place."
The Oscars have long been a cultural barometer, where every speech, montage, win, or snub is dissected as commentary on the state of American culture. But what's different now is the speed and intensity of the response. In an era in which a sitting president can react in real-time on social media and enact policies through executive orders, the Academy Awards are no longer exclusively Hollywood's biggest night — they have become a metaphorical tribunal where the industry's choices face instant scrutiny from the highest levels of power.
The Stakes of Oscar Night
With Mexico's borders and trans rights policed and politicized and a president looking to dictate artistic expression, this year's Oscars will show how politicians and celebrities use pop culture to influence public perception and shape national identity. A win for Emilia Pérez would serve as both a cultural statement and a direct challenge to Trump's policies, reinforcing Hollywood's commitment to diversity. It would affirm that stories centered on trans identity and Latino narratives deserve recognition at the industry's highest level.
Regardless of who wins or loses, the entertainment industry cannot separate itself from this political moment. When we hear, "And the Oscar goes to...," the answer will reveal more than just a winner. It will ultimately reveal where America's national identity is headed.
Jack Rico is an entertainment journalist, TV host, and media pundit with over two decades of experience covering Latinos in media and entertainment. Recently featured on ABC News' primetime special "Latinos in Hollywood" and co-host "Brown & Black" on CUNY TV, a limited television adaptation of our Webby-nominated podcast.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.