The Best Actress discourse is already tiring
Seriously, the amount of hate I've seen directed towards Mikey Madison since her win is disappointing but not surprising.
If you head over to Instagram right now and go to the academy's official posts, a good 85% of the comments are just salty Fernanda Torres stans comparing her win to Gwyneth Paltrows or complaining how their fave didn't win. This applies to other posts not even related to Madisons win as well. Heck I've even seen people get ratio'd for the simple fact that they congratulated Madison.
But that's kind of to be expected there. Much as I loved Torres' performance her fans can be a little extreme some time and had anybody whose name wasn't Fernanda Torres won in that category, this was always going to happen.
What moreso annoys me is the reaction I've seen from people relating this to The Substance.
People are acting as if Demi Moore losing is somehow proving the point of The Substance that the issue with Hollywood is that they will discard older women as actors in favour of the newer younger stars, and despite my firm agreements with that message of the film, I cant help but feel it's a little bit disrespectful to both Madison and Moore to apply it in this context.
It's disrespectful to Moore because it's acting like this is her one chance to win the Oscar and that the only reason why she could've won is the comeback narrative. To me that if anything moreso proves the point of The Substance.
It's disrespectful to Madison because it's disregarding her excellent performance.
Seriously, why does it need to be "Moore vs Madison"?.
The oscars clearly liked Anora. They gave it 5 Oscars including picture. Is it really so unbelieveable to assume that in a closely contested race, the victor would be the one from the movie the academy enjoyed more?.
I'm not saying you can't be disappointed by Moore not winning or that you have to think Madison was deserving. But let's at least be realistic as to why she did win and show some respect to all of the nominees.
As somebody who thought all 3 best Actress frontrunner were amazing and equally deserving, my heart breaks for Demi as I could tell she really wanted it. But her time will come. She will be cast in more projects after this no doubt.