Pins, platitudes and silence: Hollywood’s hollow response to Renee Good

There is a lot happening internationally. The United States has taken control of Venezuela, is closely monitoring Iran and has even floated ideas about Greenland. But domestically, inside our own communities and cities, there is a far bigger and more immediate story. That story is what happened to Renee Good in Minneapolis.

If we’re marking time through award season, the shooting of Renee Good happened three days after the Critics Choice Awards and three days before the Golden Globes. It set off a national firestorm. It dominated headlines, consumed social media and demanded attention from everyone from the president to local officials across the country. It became a turning point for ICE and the national conversation around immigration enforcement. More importantly, it was a moment of genuine unrest and grief.

And it also gave celebrities time.

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Time to ingest what each side believed about the shooting. Time to calibrate their reactions. And time to plan. Plan for what, you may ask? What they were going to say.

There is no better display of the cultural pulse than an awards show. In 2022, the Oscars were marked by Ukraine ribbons. Other years have featured refugee pins. We’ve seen dueling red carpet statements for Gaza and Israel. So when I settled in to watch the Golden Globes this year, I fully expected to see pins.

What I didn’t expect was how vague those messages would be, or how few people would actually wear them.

The pins on display this year were meant to reflect the moment around Renee Good and ICE, but many of them required interpretation. One said “BE GOOD,” a play on Renee’s last name, but one that would likely confuse the average viewer. Be good to whom? To law enforcement? To immigrants? To the Trump administration? To the president? To the public? The message lacked clarity.

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Another pin said “ICE OUT.” It was small and muted, without the visual clarity we’ve seen from past movements like the yellow ribbon for Israel or the Palestinian flag pins. And frankly, the slang phrase “ice me out,” popularized in music, already carries a cultural meaning far removed from immigration enforcement.

Some could argue that this is nitpicking. Historically, actors have used pins as conversation starters, explaining them on the red carpet. Often, the message is reinforced during interviews and expanded into a real, if imperfect, conversation.

And in fairness, some did exactly that. Mark Ruffalo delivered a passionate red carpet speech, appearing visibly emotional. That is expected from Ruffalo, who has long occupied one of the most consistently politically active spaces in Hollywood. Jean Smart, who would later win for Hacks, said on the carpet that she was speaking as a citizen, acknowledging how people often get annoyed when actors speak out. But when she won, she noted in her acceptance speech that she had already said her piece on the carpet.

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Which brings us to the speeches themselves.

If you had taken someone from the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and placed them in the Golden Globes of 2026, they would never believe the country was in turmoil over the shooting of a woman by a police officer. Political references in acceptance speeches were sparse, if present at all. This was especially striking given that one of the night’s most celebrated films centers on democracy and resistance to a police state.

That silence stood in sharp contrast to recent years. At the 2023 Oscars, Everything Everywhere All at Once dominated the night. Ke Huy Quan spoke about being a refugee and his journey to that stage. Just weeks earlier, Tennessee had banned drag shows, and when Daniel Kwan accepted Best Director, he plainly stated that “drag is a threat to nobody.”

To be clear, I don’t personally mind an awards show where speeches aren’t ten minutes long and centered on the social justice issue of the week. I watch award shows for the films, the performances and the fashion. Sometimes, it’s nice to forget everything else for a couple of hours.

But many people rely on these moments. TikTok was filled with frustration about how little was said, how muted the messaging felt and how much further it could have gone. Some pointed out that there was no mention of Iran, while others noted how Gaza had seemed to fall to the wayside. There was real disappointment across corners of the internet that the weight of so many current political moments barely hovered over the ceremony at all.

And that’s the reality of celebrity activism. It is often just that, a moment.

If you want activism that lasts beyond a news cycle, it requires sacrifice. Marlon Brando famously declined his Oscar, sending a Native American woman in his place to read his statement. I wasn’t alive when that happened, and I still know it as cultural lore. It mattered because it cost him something. Pins do not.

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We also need to stop outsourcing moral leadership to celebrities. In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris had virtually every major celebrity stop by her rallies. You could attend a political event and also hear Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, or catch a rare glimpse of Beyoncé. The assumption was that star power would turn out votes. Instead, it energized those who already needed no convincing.

As the Golden Globes ended and attendees changed into their second or third outfits for the afterparties, the pins disappeared. Without cameras, microphones, or red carpets, there was no need for messaging.

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