With the Oscars just around the corner and the Golden Globes and Grammys causing as much controversy as they seemingly do every year, the discourse is already sweeping across the nation.
Personally, I don’t watch award shows. I’ll refresh the page on Safari or something to keep up with it, but when they’re not even playing “Best Metal Performance” on television, does it really matter?
(You’re a winner to me, Ghost…)
However, in 2020, I did watch a specific award show: The Oscars. My family had accidentally seen most of the 2019 “Best Picture” nominees. Through that, I found my favorite film, Parasite. I created a little Oscar board and interviewed each family member to get their winners from each category. I watched with bated breath as each award was announced, becoming increasingly more sure of Parasite’s impending win as Bong Joon Ho walked away with a “Best Director” and “Best Original Screenplay” award. I squealed and clapped as the theater erupted with applause upon the monumental win for Parasite. I was thrilled. The Oscars had finally gotten it right, I thought.
But what did I even mean by that?
I had never watched the Oscars before this, so why did I care? In fact, I had never looked into the Oscars before that. Sometimes I would see “Best Picture” listed on a movie’s Wikipedia page but it never garnered more than a passing glimpse. If, perhaps, Shawshank Redemption won in 1994, I probably would have said that the Oscars were only correct in 1994 and 2023, or something. It only matters if your favorite film–your subjective favorite film–wins.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t upsets. On many occasions that have gone down in award show history, a win has so thoroughly shocked, confused, and angered viewers that the snub is more well-remembered than the win. For the Oscars, think Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain. For the Grammy’s, it has to be Kendrick Lamar’s infamous loss to Macklemore for “Best New Artist,” I mean Macklemore literally made a statement on how he felt the win should have been Kendrick’s.
I mention the Grammys and the Oscars over the Emmys or Golden Globes, mainly because they’re the awards that cause the most controversy and have the most eyes on them, which is perhaps why the awards become some controversial. So many eyes mean so many opportunities to upset people.
Every person has their own opinion (wow, shocking revelation) but I think we can all agree on certain things, perhaps based on box office, album sales, audience reviews, articles, and on and on. But attempting to use such examples as justification for or against a movie winning an Oscar is not the proof some people make it out to be. People listen to different genres of music, there seem to be more than one million subgenres in each genre and the number grows exponentially every day so on many occasions, plenty of artists will be looked over for Grammy recognition.
I have to argue that, no, award shows don’t matter. Unless when they do. I mean, Lily Gladstone is the first Native American to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. Quinta Brunson is the first Black woman to win best actress in a comedy in over 40 years at the Emmy Awards. Yes, we can still talk about the snubs, like Greta Gerwig, Celine Song, Greta Lee, and Margot Robbie, but let’s also think about how monumental some of these moments have been. These awards don’t matter, but they also do, especially when they mean so much in terms of how we as a society have grown, and how much more growing we still need to do.