Janelle Monáe at the Oscars: (Why) Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

A brief illustrated analysis of the night Monáe took the Film Industry to Church. (note: the entire performance is linked at the bottom of this page)

The radical spirit of Fred Rogers was alive and well inside Ms. Monáe at the Oscars

Janelle Monáe is a songwriter/singer/performer who explodes with energy, a gale force propelled by the whirlwind gusts that Prince, Tina Turner, James Brown and Bessie Smith generated before her. Yet when Monáe acts in film, she can hold the screen with a hushed focus that draws your ear to want her every huskily pronounced syllable.

It was a risky move to open with a number that deliberately invokes the very criticisms the Academy has played defense against for at least the last decade, and could feel patronizing and smarmy. The fact that it transcended those limitations is all due to enlisting the help of the perfect person at the perfect time to blast Hollywood’s fusty moral cobwebs and rationalizations about #oscarssowhite right out of the Dolby Theater.

I’ve seen Monáe perform several times, and she always puts together a show with great intentionality and layers of commentary in her choreography (not to mention her artistic videos.) She also has often evidenced a fierce and strong moral conscience. So if Janelle Monáe was going to open the Academy Awards in 2020, you can bet she’d make every second count. Now that the stardust and Midsommar flower petals have settled a bit, here’s a breakdown of those six minutes, decoded with the necessary caveat that there’s probably more than I’ve been able to discover or have time to mention here. After Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s Latinidad whirlwind halftime show last week, it’s been a one-two punch of fiery mass-audience inclusionary messaging.

Opening: Walking onto a set that recalls Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and this year’s ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.’

— Simultaneously refers to a film that had a message of radical kindness, ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.’ Though a significant artistic achievement, it didn’t have the cool malevolence or the male violence of ‘Joker’, ‘1917’, ‘The Irishman,’ etc. Director Mareille Hunter, a woman who is one of…