Ever since I could understand what they were. And I’m a film nut, absolutely love the medium, love hundred of stars’ performances, I’ve got whole scenes by memory, have read hundreds of books on film, if not thousands, including memoirs of directors, collections of reviews, and on and on. I just never began to understand what the Oscars are about.
What I get is that a bunch of Hollywood people pick five films (for example, in the Best Picture category) and decide somehow that these are the five nominees, then they all vote, with no guiding principles, and studios pour money into promoting their nominee, and someone wins the vote and makes a speech thanking people for voting for them.
I can’t figure out why I’m supposed to give a shit. Are the speeches, say, so scintillating or insightful that I’m supposed to need to hear them? Are the nominees so impeccably chosen that there could not possibly be a film that I enjoyed more (like quantifying pleasure in movies is an actual thing) that didn’t make the cut? Am I supposed to get all jazzed about the silly outfits actors choose to wear to their awards ceremony?
I’m not arguing the Oscars suck, which they do. I’m arguing that the entire concept is a big nothing to me, and I can’t wait until everyone re-grows a brain and stops yammering about this bullshit, and forgets who won and who lost and who got nominated, which usually takes about three weeks.
In this world, different people like different things. I’m afraid that’s not going to charge anytime soon, so you are going to countinue to find things that don’t appeal to you, but mysteriously appeals to others
I didn’t even realize they were going on yesterday until somebody posted the Will Smith slap on Facebook.
Award shows just aren’t my thing. There’s plenty of other pointless crap I do like and follow; these sorts of things just happen not to be it. I don’t care about these awards – they just tend to go to safe, mainstream and commercially successful films. Feels like a big industry circle jerk to me. My tastes skew towards more inventive work. The Grammies are even worse.
I saw some news stories earlier in the week, what with a Norwegian movie being nominated for best original screenplay and best international film. And then I saw some tweets about awards being handed out before the televised part and how bad that was. Didn’t engage with either.
I think it is too long and drawn out. I think they could cut an hour off of it with no problem. Then, after recording it and fast forwarding through the ocean of commercials, I could watch it.
I never cared about the awards, never watched it. Then again, I don’t get into movies all that much. So apart from memes and whatever gets mentioned on the news, I don’t know what happens and I don’t much care.
What I don’t get is why this particular thing gets such coverage and is taken seriously by anyone.
Here’s an example from something I used to follow closely: the NFL selects players for the Pro Bowl every year, and among hard-core fans of football, I’m sure there are arguments about who REALLY was the best strong safety in the AFC this year, etc. But even among this relatively group of people who give a shit about the All-Pro selections, there’s NOTHING like this buildup, this news coverage, this intensity of discussion, etc. What are there, like, seven people on the planet who can tell you who the starting left tackle was on the NFC Pro Bowl team in 1988 without resorting to Google? But millions can recite the Oscar winners going back decades, as if this stuff is somehow important.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who can tell you the quarterbacks each year, or which Pro Bowl years had players from ‘their’ team on it.
I doubt there are too many people who can recite each of the 20something categories for every year going back decades. But even if there are, so what? There are people who can tell you the winner of every world cup going back decades. There are people who can tell you minutiae about fashion or video games or stock car racing.
Absolutely none of it is important, except that for some people it absolutely is.
The appeal of all such awards is a bit of a puzzle; I’m focussed on the Oscars because it seems to be especially appealing, even among other awards. I like movies, actors, directors, and I enjoy asserting my opinions with other people who like them too–I just can’t get my head around why anyone cares at all, much less this much, what a bunch of strangers think about these things. If you stopped 100 people on the street and asked them who gave the best performance in a motion picture this year, you’d probably get a consensus–the question is, Why would you take the trouble? You think what you think. Has anyone ever said “I thought MUD BABY was the best picture last year, but BLOOMIN’ DAFFODILS won the Oscar, so I guess I was wrong?”
Because it’s interesting to see what people who have some expertise think about these things. You brought up the Pro Bowl. People care EVERY YEAR who gets elected to the Pro Bowl or All-NBA team. Every year people talk about snubs.
Sure. And I don’t get that either, but it’s nothing like this extravaganza. Controversies about sports or books or fashion is equally stupid and boring to me but in terms of attention paid to it, it’s like comparing a lit match to the sun.
At the risk of sounding overly pretentious no, I don’t watch, follow, or care about the Oscars. I’m not much of a cinephile so the Oscars are awards which I dont care about given to particular releases in a given time frame the specifics of which I am unfamiliar delivered in a medium that I don’t utilize.
I did watch the, IIRC, the 2004 Oscars where Lord of the Rings won everything. I hadn’t seen that move – still haven’t – but everyone at work was talking about it so I figured I’d tune in to do my part to Keep Up With the Jonses. The whole thing was boring as hell. I think that’s when the realization dawned on me that jumping on a bandwagon was not my style.
Though I know you responded to yourself a couple of posts later, I can give one data point on this. My wife and I are early 60s and absolutely have no interest in the Oscars, but we have a friend who is a self-identified lover of pop culture and was super primed to watch the Oscars last night.
Zero appeal for me, unless there is some movie or actor/director I happen to be unusually rooting for. And even then I wouldn’t watch the ceremony, I’d just check online to see afterwards who won.
Yeah, another part of my puzzlement is the relative lack of intelligent discussion of films, proportional to the unintelligent but extensive discussion of the awards ceremony for films.
We would be a far more admirable society if people cared about movies enough to articulate their thoughts about the films, actors, directors, screenwriters, editors, etc. or even knew a damned thing about what they actually, you know, DID to warrant a nomination.
Though they’re just exchanging memes, not really discussing it.