Over the past decade in particular, the annual Academy Awards ceremony has become increasingly irrelevant. Has anyone even seen “Nomadland,” the Best Picture winner from 2020? How about “Coda,” the 2021 winner of the awards for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay? 2023’s “Oppenheimer” might sound a bit more familiar, but I doubt anyone remembers that the three-hour biopic snagged Best Picture that year. Part of the reason that the high-profile awards ceremony has faded from much of the public’s radar is because the public has seen Hollywood for what it is: a self-aggrandizing cesspool of degeneracy and idiocy.

Serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein was, for a long time, a staple at the Academy Awards, producing and bankrolling Best Picture nominee after Best Picture nominee. Through Miramax and The Weinstein Company, the now-ostracized film mogul was involved with movies garnering 341 Academy Award nominations and over 80 wins. Although he was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2017 following public revelation of his numerous acts of perversion, sexual aggression, sexual assault, and rape, the fact remained that Weinstein had fostered friendships and professional relationships with some of the biggest names in cinema, from directors like Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese to stars like Ben Affleck and Meryl Streep. Given the prolific nature of Weinstein’s sexual abuse, it seemed (and still does seem) nearly impossible that his close friends and repeat collaborators were unaware of his sadistic acts.

Shortly after Weinstein was exposed, Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey, who starred in critically-acclaimed films like “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “The Usual Suspects,” “Seven,” “L.A. Confidential,” “American Beauty,” and “Baby Driver,” was accused of multiple acts of sexual assault of other men, including some who were minors at the time that the alleged assaults took place. Director Bryan Singer, who initially helmed the “X-Men” superhero franchise and worked with Spacey on “The Usual Suspects,” was also accused of sexually abusing other men, including some who were minors at the time of the alleged abuse. The exposure of such power players as Weinstein and Spacey led to countless filmmakers, producers, and actors being accused of sexual abuse and predatory behavior: Pixar’s John Lasseter, director Brett Ratner, screenwriter Paul Schrader, and actors Russell Brand, Gérard Depardieu, James Franco, and Dustin Hoffman are just a few of those who were accused.

The rampant degeneracy of the filmmaking industry was a turn-off to many, especially conservatives and Christians. Hollywood has also aggressively promoted woke ideologies, such as the LGBT agenda, in its films, and many of its loudest voices have vociferously endorsed and promoted abortion. One such voice belongs to actress Michelle Williams, who used her 2020 Golden Globes acceptance speech to advocate for abortion. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose. To choose when to have my children and with whom,” the actress said, clutching her literal golden idol. “I know my choices might look different, but thank God or whomever you pray to that we live in a country founded on the principle that I am free to live by my faith and you are free to live by yours.”

For years, conservatives and Christians have derided Hollywood as a bastion of leftist influence, a propaganda mill for all manner of moral decay, glamorizing degenerate lifestyles and aggressively, incessantly normalizing sinful actions and behaviors while attacking moral and traditional institutions and practices. Now, an abortion activist was promoting literal child sacrifice for the sake of a literal golden idol. I have a feeling that the few conservatives and Christians who hadn’t already tuned out Hollywood following the Weinstein scandal and all that followed lost whatever remaining interest they may have had thanks to Williams’s speech.

In the intervening years, conservatives and Christians have put their money where their mouths are and have simply not watched the woke garbage that Hollywood peddles. As The Washington Stand detailed last week, woke fare has suffered at the box office, prompting studios and filmmakers in many cases to abandon the injection of ideology into their movies and just try to entertain audiences instead — what a novel concept! While it will obviously take a long time to right the Hollywood ship, the culture within the film industry seems already to be changing, if only ever so slightly.

In sharp contrast to Michelle Williams and her blatant abortion activism, actress Jessie Buckley used her Best Actress win at the Academy Awards Sunday night to praise the gift of motherhood. The Irish-born actress, who won her Oscar for portraying William Shakespeare’s wife in the film “Hamnet,” addressed her husband, Freddie Sorenson. “I love you. You’re the most incredible dad, you’re my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you. I do, I do,” she said. Buckley and Sorenson, who were married in 2023, welcomed their first child, a daughter, into the world last year. Buckley joked that her eight-month-old daughter “has absolutely no idea what’s going on and is probably dreaming of milk, but this is kind of a big deal.” Addressing her daughter, the actress continued, “I love you, and I love being your mom, and I can’t wait to discover life beside you.”

Buckley’s speech, clearly heartfelt and sincere, might be considered an extension of the themes of “Hamnet.” The film centers around Shakespeare’s family, chiefly his wife, Agnes, and his three children, Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith. The latter two are twins who capitalize on their similar looks to play tricks on family members, but when Judith falls ill with the bubonic plague, Hamnet decides to trick death and offers himself in her place. Thus, Judith recovers while Hamnet falls prey to the disease, which eventually claims his life. The remainder of the film follows the relationship between Agnes and Shakespeare as they cope with the loss of their son and find healing in the play “Hamlet.”

Motherhood, love, loss, self-sacrifice, such profound concepts are often treated — when treated at all — in a soulless manner by Hollywood. The principles of modern, leftist-influenced psychology reign, giving pride of place to emotion and ignoring the very existence of the human soul. It is rare to see an award-laden Hollywood production treat such institutions as marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, and family with respect — it is practically unheard of to see such a film reverence and elevate these institutions. The pain Agnes suffers at the loss of her child is more significant, more brutal, more soul-searing than the pain any feminist “girlboss” may feel at the loss of a job or at another breakup. And while those like Michelle Williams laud the loss of their unborn children as an emblem of freedom and accomplishment, Buckley’s Agnes evinces the fact that a mother gives her heart to her children, so that their loss tears away a piece of her very being, never to be recovered again. A mother’s heart is to be broken, to be given away, but to her children, not to a golden idol.

It may be too much to hope that Hollywood’s days of degeneracy and decadence are at an end, but more films like “Hamnet” and more speeches extolling the joys of motherhood and the blessing which children are would go a long way towards cleaning the film industry’s image and maybe even regaining the trust of conservatives and Christians who aren’t interested in self-congratulatory abortion activism.