To mark the first post-Weinstein Academy Awards, Hollywood gave a credibly accused rapist an Oscar.

Kobe Bryant was roundly applauded upon winning Best Animated Short for “Dear Basketball,” essentially a valentine to himself. He thanked his wife, Vanessa, who stood by him as he was criminally charged with raping a 19-year-old girl in 2003.

Really, should we be surprised? This was an Oscar telecast hyped to be like no other, reflective of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.

Yet it was just another exercise in image rehab.

The show opened with a montage designed to evoke 1930s newsreels of red carpets and premieres — a nod to the good old days, when the likes of Fatty Arbuckle and Louis B. Mayer and Alfred Hitchcock terrorized with full industry protection.

“This is history happening right here,” host Jimmy Kimmel said at the start of the show. The statement was apt, but not in the way Kimmel meant: The 2018 Oscars were more about looking backward than forward, the ever-changing overly gilded set meant to reassert Hollywood as the epicenter of glamour.

As if to reassure, Hollywood trotted out those whom they otherwise exile: old women. “I’m older than the academy!” exclaimed presenter Eva Marie Saint. (The academy is 90; Saint is 93.)

The nominees were more diverse than ever; the presenters more so. At least six male nominees and presenters wore velvet — lush, soft, traditionally feminine, as if to somehow pledge allegiance.

Even the winners — who normally dry heave, tremble and claim to have no speech prepared because they never, ever thought this would happen, though there was at least a 1-in-5 chance — were measured and prepared, as though they had been advised to keep a sense of proportion so soon after such tragic revelations.

No industry understands image better, and so we were treated to a host of montages signaling heroism and virtue, each grouped according to theme: strong women, men in battle, iconoclasts fighting for what’s right — and, of course, movies about how great the movies are.

Yet for all this virtue-signaling — for every Casey Affleck or James Franco disinvited or opting not to show — the rot remains.

Best Actor winner Gary Oldman was accused of domestic abuse in 2001. Host Kimmel rose to fame with “The Man Show,” which ran on Comedy Central from 1999 to 2003 and contained among its misogynistic and racist bits: women in bikinis bouncing on trampolines or shoving bananas in their mouths; Kimmel asking women to feel his crotch; and Kimmel frequently in blackface while playing legendary NBA star Karl Malone.

“Movies,” intoned presenter Matthew McConaughey. “They’re an illusion. Literally a magic trick.”

The truest thing said all night.