VF Oscars Dispatch: Parties, Politics, and How Culture Meets the Moment

For all their glitz, glamour, and insularity, the Oscars have never been an escape from American politics so much as a reflection of it. Who wins what award has always been influenced by the cultural and political forces of the moment. And this year’s Academy Awards—which host Radhika Jones unpacks on the latest episode of Inside the Hive, alongside editors Claire Howorth and Michael Calderone—were no different.

Jones opens with some vivid on-the-ground observations from the viewing party she herself hosted, where she celebrated with a suite of A-list legends. “I had the pleasure of sitting with John Waters and Debbie Harry and John Mulaney and Olivia Munn, and we were joined by Mick Jagger,” Jones recounts. “So it was a lot of fun—lots of spicy commentary, only some of which is safe for podcast.” Later, at the annual VF Oscar Party, Jones and Howorth caught sight of 2025 winners such as Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison, as well as nominees like Jesse Eisenberg and industry bigwigs including David Zaslav, Ari Emanuel, and Sarah Staudinger. Howorth, meanwhile, picked up on an “interesting” fashion trend—seemingly brought on by a fabric shortage—that she cleverly dubbed “nearly, sheerly nude”: “There were a lot of, um, sheer gowns. They were all very sophisticated.”

But beyond strange sartorial sights, the Oscars served as a revealing mirror of America’s chilling political climate. Think back to 2017, shortly after Donald Trump’s first election win, when then host Jimmy Kimmel was “literally tweeting at Donald Trump during the Oscars,” Calderone notes. With Conan O’Brien’s selection as this year’s host, he says, “there was an expectation this would not be as political.” Indeed, O’Brien only managed to deliver one anti-Trump barb during the telecast, perhaps a reflection of the lack of appetite for pushback against Trump 2.0. “The one joke that Conan O’Brien did have when it came to politics was that Americans might be enjoying Anora because somebody is finally standing up to Russia,” Calderone adds. Speaking of Anora, the movie’s Oscar sweep also felt especially apropos, Jones says, given that “this was also the same week that President Trump went after Ukraine’s president, [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy. So there was a lot of talk about Russia and kind of those undertones.”

Despite the relatively muted show of Trump resistance, the awards still yielded moments in which politics took center stage. Consider the filmmakers of No Other Land—a documentary chronicling Israeli destruction in the West Bank—who, during their acceptance speech, openly criticized US foreign policy on the Israel-Hamas war. Calderone notes that it was “remarkable” not only because of stars’ typical reticence to address touchy subjects, but also “because No Other Land has no US distribution.”

Howorth also points to the remarks of Samantha Quan, Anora director Sean Baker’s wife and a producer on the film, who had a stirring message about how “young filmmakers” should seek to “tell the stories you want to tell.”

“To me, that’s not directly invoking politics,” Howorth says, “but I couldn’t help but think of AI and the creep of AI in media, in our industry, in film. It just felt like a moment of emphasizing humanity.”

In the end, Jones notes, this year’s Oscars served as a reminder of the “lag time” that has long existed “between the things that are happening” in reality and their portrayal “in the realm of fictional storytelling.”

“I think that we will see over the next few years how the events of today are absorbed creatively and processed by some of our best creative minds. I’m thinking—over the arc of, I don’t know, the past 50 years—the way that Don DeLillo has written about historical events or the various films that came out of 9/11,” she says. “It’s not an immediate reaction, and I think that it’ll be interesting to watch what kinds of shows land with audiences these days and also what gets greenlit, what gets promoted, where the talent goes, what kind of projects they want to take on.”