Last Sunday night, Joaquin Phoenix accepted the Oscar for best actor for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Now I must admit I have never seen The Dark Knight nor have I ever watched the Oscars, but after hearing so much buzz about Joaquin’s speech, I decided to look up the transcript online. I found the transcript of his speech here and honestly it is one of the most inspirational speeches I have ever read. To summarize, he spent a brief time expressing his gratitude towards The Dark Knight, however the majority of his speech focuses on the fight against injustice. When celebrities normally talk about injustice they focus on racism, lgbtq rights, or gender equality as Joaquin mentions, but the elephant in the room is animal rights. While all of those issues are important and deserve attention, animal rights are something people tend to shy away from, and even mock. Joaquin focuses on the dairy industry and how we feel entitled to artificially inseminate mother cows, steal her baby when she gives birth, and drink her milk that is intended for her calf, just so we can have milk to put in our cereal or coffee. He urges the audience to change their habits, connect themselves with the natural word, and eliminate their egocentric point of view.
Reading this speech absolutely took me by surprise, because normally when celebrities win an award their speech usually includes how thankful they are for their fans, managers, family, etc., or how hard work pays off, or some motivational crap like following your dreams. The speech is usually centered around them and neglects to initiate actual change in the world. As mentioned above, when celebrities do mention social issues in their speeches, it is exclusively limited to humans. Millions of people watch the Oscars, so celebrities have the potential to reach generations of people with the message in their speeches. A single speech that they make could hold the power to change the world, and that is what I believe Joaquin Phoenix has done. I have already seen countless amounts of people going to Twitter to tweet how much Joaquin’s speech moved them, and that they will be giving up dairy. Additionally the dairy industry has been increasing their advertising, in an attempt to clean up their image after Joaquin’s speech, showing how threatened and scared they are. Award show speeches are a valuable tool to reach the masses but unfortunately most celebrities don’t use this to their advantage and instead focus on themselves.
As an animal rights activist and vegan for over five years, Joaquin’s speech moved me to tears. While there are plenty of vegan celebrities in the media, most never bring up animal rights or veganism on their social media or interviews. And if they do, it is only for a brief amount of time, as their fans start to get annoyed or angry. It is so refreshing to see a celebrity not care about what anyone else thinks and to stick up for the voiceless. I try not to admire or look up to celebrities, but Joaquin Phoenix deserves all the admiration in my book.
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