Film + TV

Anohni, the first transgender Oscar nominated performer, refuses to attend

by Jesse Locke

Anohni – also known as the lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons – made history as the first transgender performer nominated for the Academy Awards’ Best Original Song. However, when her performance at the Oscars was one of two songs cut reportedly due to “time constraints” (replaced by the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, who is not a nominee), she decided to skip the awards show altogether.

The artist was invited to walk the red carpet and sit in the crowd while her fellow nominees Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Thom Yorke truther Sam Smith took the stage, but she chose to stay home instead. Anohni explained her decision in a powerful essay for Pitchfork:

Everyone told me that I still ought to attend, that a walk down the red carpet would still be “good for my career.”

Last night I tried to force myself to get on the plane to fly to L.A. for all the nominee events, but the feelings of embarrassment and anger knocked me back, and I couldn’t get on the plane. I imagined how it would feel for me to sit amongst all those Hollywood stars, some of the brave ones approaching me with sad faces and condolences. There I was, feeling a sting of shame that reminded me of America’s earliest affirmations of my inadequacy as a transperson. I turned around at the airport and went back home.

As if to rub salt into the wound, the next morning the Oscars added that I was transgendered to the trivia page of their website.

Anohni noted that she is not the first transgender songwriting nominee, following Angela Morley in the early ’70s. She also clarified that the exclusion may not be due to the fact that she is transgendered, noting that her environmental activist anthem “Manta Ray” from an artist relatively unknown in the U.S. might not have been a huge ratings grab. Sadly, it’s a beautiful song that would have likely won her a whole new set of fans.

Midway through the essay, Anohni compares the American cultural system to global warming, describing it as “a system of social oppression and diminished opportunities for transpeople that has been employed by capitalism in the U.S. to crush our dreams and our collective spirit.” She ends on an especially powerful and political note:

I have decided not to attend the Academy Awards this election year. I will not be lulled into submission with a few more well manufactured, feel-good ballads and a bit of good old fashioned T. and A. They are going to try to convince us that they have our best interests at heart by waving flags for identity politics and fake moral issues. But don’t forget that many of these celebrities are the trophies of billionaire corporations whose only intention it is to manipulate you into giving them your consent and the last of your money. They have been paid to do a little tap dance to occupy you while Rome burns.

Read the full essay “Why I Am Not Why I Am Not Attending the Academy Awards.”