Amy Schumer got the last laugh when Zelensky appeared at the Grammys

It was received like a bad joke, a privileged Hollywood misstep. Amy Schumer – one of three comedians who hosted the Oscars this year, alongside Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes – wanted the Academy Awards to invite Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to speak during the ceremony. She thought bringing in the leader on video link – in the same way Zelensky made an appearance in front of various national governments a week prior, including the US Congress – would be powerful, she said, but the academy had vetoed the suggestion. A lot of actual grown-ups laughed behind their hands at the fact Schumer had even dared to admit to posing such a ridiculous question. Of course Zelensky wouldn’t come to the Oscars, they said. Didn’t that silly woman realise he had other things to do?!

Cultural commentators have a bit of a problem with female comedians meaning what they say. Coordinated jokes are often seen as unfortunate missteps; while male comedians are assumed to be doing things “on purpose”, women’s self-deprecating humour is often seen as having happened “by accident”. Thus Schumer’s actual joke at the Oscars, where she called Kirsten Dunst a “seat filler” and pretended to remove her, was widely referred to as “embarrassing” and foolish – Schumer eventually had to reveal that Dunst was in on the joke, breaking that hallowed comedian’s rule about explaining the joke to the audience. Her Zelensky suggestion drew the ire of many. But she got the last laugh when the Ukrainian president made an appearance at the Grammys on Sunday.

It turns out that a former actor – one who became president after winning his nation’s heart playing an unlikely man foisted into the presidency on a TV show that Netflix recently made available across multiple countries – is pretty amenable to the idea of putting on a performance at the Grammys. Over video and accompanied by John Legend and two Ukrainian performers, the president contrasted the joy of music and acting with the desolation of war-torn Ukraine. It was a surprisingly well-executed message, one that managed to be hard-hitting without taking down the whole ceremony with it. It’s a little difficult to make the arts seem critically important when the leader of a war-torn nation has just spoken – but Zelensky was mindful of that, positioning the arts as vital to a functioning democracy. It worked.

What must the academy think now? It’s difficult to say, considering we’ve all been drowning under a sea of opinions ever since The Slap. (Daniel Radcliffe spoke for a lot of us when he refused to opine on the incident himself, declaring that he was “dramatically bored” of the whole thing.) Ever since Will Smith got on stage and back-handed Chris Rock, the academy has been the source of a lot of scrutiny. Why wasn’t Smith removed after an act of blatant violence? He was asked to leave but he wouldn’t go, came the lukewarm response. Why was he allowed to pick up his own Oscar moments later, while making a weirdly teary speech about how love and God had made him do it, and then to go on to the after-party? Well, decisions had already been made, and Chris Rock said he didn’t want any heavy-handed action. Days later, it was announced that Smith had resigned – presumably under pressure – from the academy, a “punishment” that has no real consequences while they decide on a nebulous piece of “disciplinary action”. “He’ll be fine, he’ll be back,” said Oprah, and she’s probably right. In retrospect, it’s a good thing Zelensky didn’t attend.

The academy has come out of this looking even worse than Smith. It’s shown itself to be toothless and amoral, unable to do much else except tweet something about not condoning violence in any form after an actor hit a comedian on stage (as if any of us believed Smith’s response was the official stance of the Oscars, perhaps). It drew a strict line between the Oscars and Ukraine, but then dithered when faced with the smallest amount of violence on its own stage. And Sean Penn threatened to smelt his own Oscars in public if the academy didn’t platform Zelensky – so presumably we can all look forward to that Instagram Live any day now.

In the battle of the awards ceremonies, it’s safe to say the Grammys came out on top this year. And breathing a sigh of relief in the corner must be the VMAs, where Kanye West jumped on stage to interrupt Taylor Swift in 2009. That now polite-seeming interjection will likely fall out of public consciousness now Will Smith has given everyone something much more shocking to ogle at. But it’s the academy that will be under the spotlight in the weeks to come.