Joaquin Phoenix's Milk Speech

Overview

Joaquin Phoenix's Milk Speech refers to actor Joaquin Phoenix's acceptance speech for receiving the "Best Actor in a Leading Role" award at the 2020 Academy Awards. During his speech, he spoke out against drinking cow's milk saying "we feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and when she gives birth we steal her baby even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable and then we take her milk that's intended for a calf and we put it in our coffee and in our cereal." The statement incited commentary on Twitter either mocking or celebrating the statement.

Background

On February 9th, 2020, Joaquin Phoenix won "Best Actor in a Leading Role" for his performance as the Joker. ABC shared a clip of his speech which advocated for animal rights to Twitter which gained over 15,000 likes and 4,800 retweets in a day.

Spread

On February 9th, 2020, Twitter user @ditzkoff^[1] tweeted an image of dancing joker with the caption, "tfw you drink almond milk" which garnered over 4,200 likes in a day (shown below, left). That same day, Twitter user @OrangePaulp^[2] used the me explaining to my mom image captioned "Joaquin explaining milk to the audience" in a tweet which accumulated over 2,200 likes in a day (shown below, right).

That same night, the animal rights group, PETA tweeted , "JAW DROP. Sending a HUGE congratulations to #vegan Joaquin Phoenix for winning Best Actor! Joaquin has dedicated his life to ending speciesism and that speech was proof that he is never afraid to speak up for ALL beings. #Joker #Oscars #EndSpeciesism" (shown below). The post garnered over 9,000 likes and 2,800 retweets in a day. The next day, the Daily Dot^[3] published an article covering reactions to the speech.

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