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      Was John Cena’s Naked Oscars Moment the Best Joke of the Night?

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      John Cena’s skit at the Academy Awards underscores an intractable gender imbalance, even as it gets legitimate laughs. John Cena’s ‘streaker manqué” routine at the Oscars was pretty funny. In an obvious setup, host Jimmy Kimmel asked, “Can you imagine if a nude man ran across the stage today?” upon which a seemingly undressed Mr. Cena popped his head out from behind the curtain to say, “I changed my mind, I don’t want to do the streaker bit.” When Mr. Kimmel reminded him that it was all for comedy, Mr. Cena replied with faux seriousness, “the male body is not a joke.”But it was a joke. And soon, an entirely naked, and remarkably buff, Mr. Cena came onstage to introduce the Best Costume Design, nervously grasping the sealed Oscar envelope over his genitals, as a makeshift fig leaf. The audience howled as he inched along, hobbling sideways with painstaking little steps — trying to keep his envelope level and his private parts covered. Then, in a bit of television magic, he was draped in a toga-like, one-shouldered robe with a tasseled rope belt. Bit over, crowd delighted, and an obvious point made about the importance of costume.The routine had deep roots in Academy history, harkening back to a famous episode at the 1974 Oscars, when a streaker interrupted the proceedings (just as the very refined David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor), but its relevance extends into the present day.Humor happens when recognition meets surprise. We laugh when something routine suddenly transforms into something unexpected. An exactingly chiseled, naked male body onstage is only funny because it is unexpected — because, that is, it does not belong to a woman. Seeing a naked woman on stage at the Oscars could never be funny, simply because it’s the norm to see female bodies in various states of revealing dress on the red carpet, and in movies as well. The humor of Mr. Cena’s performance actually derived from how clearly it mirrored what the women are always doing — right down to the mincing, precarious steps.We tune into the Oscars to see spectacular women in spectacular gowns. Those gowns are also intricately made framing devices for women’s bodies, which are usually vastly more visible than the men’s. Although there is now far more diversity of style and body type welcomed at these events, most of the fashion still spotlights breasts, buttocks and thighs. There are oceans of gleaming, bare female flesh. Skirts are slit to the waist, necklines to the navel — sometimes both at the same time. Sometimes dresses are actually transparent. Both Florence Pugh (in a silver Del Core number) and Becky G wore peek-a-boo bustiers that freed the nipple visually. It is not always comfortable to wear such clothes. They require special undergarments, body tape, excellent posture and constant vigilance to avoid what’s come to be called a “wardrobe malfunction.” Women dressed like this are exactly as nervous as Mr. Cena was only pretending to be — and for far longer than the few minutes his gag lasted. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Director of ’20 Days in Mariupol’ Says He’d Rather Have No Oscar and No War

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      The Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov used his acceptance speech for “20 Days in Mariupol,” which won the Oscar for best documentary feature on Sunday, to give an emotional denunciation of the continued invasion of his country by Russian forces.“I’ll be the first director on this stage who will say, ‘I wish I never made this film,’” Chernov said.The harrowing first-person account from Chernov, a video journalist for The Associated Press, captures the first days of the Russian invasion and the devastation and destruction the port city of Mariupol faced. “20 Days in Mariupol” is the first Ukrainian film to win an Oscar.“I wish to be able to exchange this to Russia never attacking Ukraine, never occupying our cities,” Chernov continued. “I wish to give it all the recognition to Russia not killing tens of thousands of my fellow Ukrainians. I wish for them to release all the hostages, all the soldiers who are protecting their lands, all the civilians who are now in their jails.”Chernov and his crew raced to make it out of Mariupol alive. He said in his speech that he could not change history but wanted it to be remembered.“We can make sure that the history record is set straight and that the truth will prevail and that the people of Mariupol and those who have given their lives will never be forgotten,” he said.Many Ukrainians echoed this view on Monday as they celebrated on social media the news that the documentary had won an Oscar. They said seeing the documentary was crucial to truly understanding Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.“The world saw the truth about Russia’s crimes,” said Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential office of Ukraine. “Our film broke enemy propaganda.”In a statement last week before the awards ceremony, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the “horrific and true story” told in the documentary was “crucial to counter Russian lies, to keep Ukraine in the spotlight.” More

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      Missing the Gay Best Friend

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      In film and on TV, he was a sign of cultural progress. Then he was a tired stereotype. Then he disappeared. So why do we want him back?SOMETIMES, YOU DON’T know how much you’ve been missing something, or even that you’ve been missing it, until you have it back. That may explain the unexpected nostalgic pang I felt while watching Nathan Lane connive and conspire with an array of imperiously behatted women on the second season of Max’s real housewives of New York costume drama “The Gilded Age.” Or the similar pang I felt while watching Mario Cantone reprise his role as the embittered confidant Anthony Marentino on the second season of Max’s other real housewives of New York costume drama “And Just Like That …” In both instances, it seemed suddenly clear that, for a long time now, popular culture has been moving forward without a once-essential style accessory: the Gay Best Friend. We’re not supposed to mourn his absence; we’re not supposed to want him back. But I kind of do.Listen to this article, read by Ron ButlerOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.Sardonic and supportive, caustic and self-deprecating, alternately the angel and the devil on the shoulders of countless heroines, the Gay Best Friend — always free, always available, there when he’s needed and invisible the minute he isn’t — had been a staple of women-driven, gay-friendly movies and television shows since I was a teenager in the early 1980s, at the dawn of the representation-matters era. As our designated representative, the homosexual confidant wasn’t ideal, but he was better than nothing. He could serve as a pet, a provocateur or a sob sister; a servile, wince-inducing stereotype or a sly underminer of various heterosexual norms. For gay audiences, his existence, rarely in the thick of the action but rather just next door to it, offered, at its best, a brief glimpse into a universe of possibilities — a universe that mainstream culture was still unwilling to enter more immersively. Over the next couple of decades, the Gay Best Friend’s development could be traced alongside the overall arc of gay culture as it bent toward justice.And then, seemingly without anybody noticing, he ghosted, disappearing from the scene with barely an acknowledgment that he’d been there at all. (The momentary appearance of Earring Magic Ken in 2023’s biggest film hit, “Barbie,” is the last known sighting.) Was the cultural demise of the Gay Best Friend a defeat, or was it a sign of progress? And either way, whatever happened to that guy? He was fun to have around and, all in all, good company.IT MAKES SENSE that, in the 2020s, the Gay Best Friend is not only virtually extinct but even frowned upon as démodé, a quaint form of minstrelsy. In an era in which everybody is determined to live life as the star of their own show, the G.B.F., a member of a sexual minority who accepts that his destiny is to serve as a tangential character rather than a central figure, feels self-abnegating in a way that renders him politically suspect. Why would any self-respecting gay man choose to define himself primarily as a woman’s ornamentation? The trope is by now so familiar that it can be spoofed: A 2023 “Saturday Night Live” sketch, “Straight Male Friend,” shrewdly posits that being the Gay Best Friend (as embodied by Bowen Yang) is essentially uncompensated emotional labor, and that after a long day (or at least a long brunch) of listening and supporting and encouraging, what gay men really need is a dude-bro buddy with virtually no emotional intelligence who just wants to hang.Has the character simply outlived its questionable-in-the-first-place value? The inverse of the Gay Best Friend is the Fag Hag, and the minefields of that particular stereotype announce themselves right in the label (twice in just six letters). Forever bemoaning her rejection by the straight world, often the first to announce that she considers herself overweight or unattractive and viewed by her gay friends as a kind of rescue case, the Fag Hag character can be predicated on affection, condescension or both, but the general sense is that her time has passed. The character has also come under fire for reasons that lie outside of popular culture, as frustration has increased over the minimization of the role of women, both straight and lesbian, in the struggles and movements that have defined the past 60 years of gay history.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Al Pacino Awkwardly Announces Best Picture Oscar for ‘Oppenheimer’

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      Al Pacino put a room full of Hollywood stars a little bit on edge to close out the 96th Academy Awards.Rather than listing all 10 nominees while presenting the best picture Oscar, or offering a conventional “And the Oscar goes to,” Pacino simply said “Here it comes” before slowly opening the envelope.“And my eyes see ‘Oppenheimer,’” Pacino said next, to tepid applause from an audience that seemed unsure whether that statement was the most important proclamation of the night.“Yes, yes,” Pacino, 83, said of the movie that was considered the favorite to win best picture and finished with a night-best seven awards.At that point, on came the music, and cheers rose from the crowd. The camera cut to Christopher Nolan, the film’s director, and Emma Thomas, one of its producers, as they stood up and made their way to the stage.Did Jimmy Kimmel see it coming? Just minutes earlier, Kimmel, the host of the ceremony, made a joke about needing to tear up the envelope that said Emma Stone had won best actress for “Poor Things,” an allusion to the epic “Moonlight”/“La La Land” best picture mix-up of 2017.After the ceremony, Bill Kramer, the chief executive of the academy, said he was pleased with Pacino’s performance. “Everything went beautifully,” Kramer said. “He was just having fun up there.”Nicole Sperling More

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      Ryan Gosling Performs ‘Just Ken’ at the Oscars With a Cameo By Slash

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      In one of the most anticipated and surely one of the most exuberant moments of Oscar night, Ryan Gosling took the stage to perform “I’m Just Ken,” the nominated song from “Barbie” by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt.Wearing a sparkling pink suit and a cowboy hat, Gosling started out in the audience serenading his “Barbie” co-star Margot Robbie, who couldn’t contain her giggles. He then took the stage surrounded by an army of besuited Ken dancers, including fellow movie Kens Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa and Scott Evans. Mark Ronson joined him onstage but Slash of Guns N’ Roses did the true shredding, showing up midway through for a cameo. In a Ken-like demonstration of (minimal) strength he punched through a pink board with his hand, wearing a pink glove.” At one point, Gosling returned to the crowd leading a singalong that included Robbie, director Greta Gerwig, “Barbie” actress America Ferrera and Emma Stone. (Stone was not in “Barbie,” however, she sang with Gosling in “La La Land.”)On the red carpet, Ronson promised an “absolutely bananas spectacle” in an interview with E!, and he delivered on that promise, complete with cut outs of Barbie heads and a “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” aesthetic.“Doing any sort of live TV is nerve-racking, and then to do it in that room? There’s not many rooms that are more intimidating,” Simu Liu told The Times at the Governors Ball following the telecast. “Nerves were running high and there was such a moment of elation when we were done: ‘Yes!’ I think we pulled it off,” he said. In another life, Gosling might have gone the pop star route. He got his start on “The All New Mickey Mouse Club,” the revival of the classic Disney variety show, which also launched the careers of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake. Before that, Gosling was a child dancer. His early routines, including one in which he wears “Hammer pants,” have received tens of millions of views online.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Jabs Back at Trump After His Oscars Post on Truth Social

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      Former President Donald J. Trump couldn’t help himself. And Jimmy Kimmel couldn’t resist either. So the Oscars wound to a close on a political note.Kimmel used some of his final stage time as host to read, to millions of Americans watching at home, a post published on Truth Social by Trump. (And yes, he really did post it.)Drawing out his phone onstage, Kimmel decided to share what he called “a review.”“Has there ever been a worse host than Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars,” Kimmel said, reading part of Trump’s post, which included a disparaging nickname for the ABC host George Stephanopoulos.“His opening was that of a less than average person trying too hard to be something which he is not, and never can be,” Kimmel continued. “Get rid of Kimmel and perhaps replace him with another washed up, but cheap, ABC ‘talent,’ George Slopanopoulos. He would make everybody on stage look bigger, stronger, and more glamorous.”“Blah, blah, blah,” Kimmel said. “Make America great again.”After asking the audience, “See if you can guess which former president just posted that?” Kimmel offered one final jab, expressing surprise that Trump had stayed up to watch the telecast.“Isn’t it past your jail time?” he said. More

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      Best Oscars Red Carpet Looks: Emma Stone, Colman Domingo and More

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      At the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday, the red carpet showed not only its true color but also its reputation as a vehicle for elegant, over-the-top and even political fashion.Though there were bright moments — Cynthia Erivo’s dress was a “Wicked” shade of green, Taylor Zakhar Perez wore powder blue Prada — many of the gowns and tuxedos that graced the carpet were black. Some stars’ ensembles harked back to attire they wore at prior Oscars ceremonies. Marlee Matlin said that her shimmering lilac Rodarte gown nodded to the dress she wore when she won the best actress award in 1987, and Lupita Nyong’o went with a pale bluish-silver Armani dress inspired by the color of the gown she wore when she won the best supporting actress award in 2014.Sparkling brooches were among the most visible accessories on both men and women, as were tiny red pins calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. The Israel-Hamas war also influenced action off the carpet, with protests taking place as celebrities were arriving at the ceremony.Of all the fashion on display at the Oscars, these 19 looks stood out as doing the most.Billie Eilish: Most Young Old Hollywood!A power skirt suit.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe Gen Z singer, a songwriter for “Barbie,” dialed up the glamour with flowing hair, a houndstooth Chanel bag and a tweed skirt suit with an Artists4Ceasefire pin on the jacket.Lupita Nyong’o: Most Icy Cool!Shining like a diamond.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More