In search of a Perfect Award Show

After taking a long break from writing on this blog, at least a serious entry, I thought I'd write about something that I strongly feel about. Moreover the timing seems right with all the major award shows just around the corner.....so why do we care about these award shows anyways? Why is it that they draw most opinions, rants, pissy fans and pretty much ridicule all around. The big question that always comes up is which is a better award show and is there anything like a perfect award show?

In India's case we are all very familiar with the usual complain about Filmfare awards that they are biased toward popular cinema and they tend to favor certain performers more than others. Then more recently the National Awards which seemed to be pretty fair, came under some fire about being biased as well. In addition there are numerous other award shows, which are just another form of me too filmfare awards......

The way I look at it is, broadly speaking, there are two kinds of award shows - first that cater to the masses like Filmfare and second that cater to the snobs like for example, the Oscars (in the recent years) and our National Awards. It's difficult to say which is a better award show, because their method of recognizing great peformances are based on completely opposite criteria. What is popular among the masses is very rarely liked by the movie snobs and vice versa. As an example the combined box office collections of all the best picture nominees for Oscars this year is around $250 Million (of which Juno pitched in $100 Million). There were six movies that made more than that combined total - Spiderman 3, I Am Legend, Shrek the Third, Pirates, Harry Potter and Transformers and my guess is, these six movies would not have, even, six oscar nominations combined. So deciding which award show is better, totally depends on what kind of method you believe in?

I personally believe in the wisdom of crowds more than the wisdom of certain experts. It's been proven scientifically that a crowd of people is right most of the time as compared to the opinions of a few experts. Moreover its completely against any democratic principal to impose the choice and will of a few people on a larger population. There might be cases when you agree with the expert opinion, and at times you might yourself feel like an expert, but that still doesn't make it the right way. It only means that you've switched sides. The fact is if half of people in India saw Om Shanti Om and thought it was a great movie, it deserves to be nominated. That to me has more truth in it than 50 odd people that saw No Smoking and felt it was a great movie. Just by saying that masses don't understand this elitist cinema so they don't have the right to vote, or anything they vote for is stupid, is a very wrong way of looking at it. Not to take this too seriously but think for a moment that the kind of people that have that holier than thou attitude and think that masses can't think for themselves, are the kind of people that have historically been against democracy......

If Oscars were conducted the way Filmfare awards are done, I don't think you'll see the same nominations that we've seen in recent years, there is no way that happens. And I don't mean to vilify Oscars, because I think they do a great job of finding these independent movies which don't have a big budget and give them a fair chance against the big studio movies. Oscars have been very good about rewarding good performances regardless of the movie budget, but I think over the last few years they've just gone overboard with these movies that 80 percent of American population has not even heard about. I think 2004 was the last year when there was more than one big budget, popular movie that got nominated for best feature film.

But at the end of the day if you ask me, these award shows are just big displays of vanity. There might be some performers that honestly care about winning an award, but most of them are just happy making millions and snorting some more of that new drug in the market....I know as fans we all love our stars and like to see them win, but look at this way, that its all fun and games for them. They are just there having fun and even if they don't win an award this year, if they are good, they'll win eventually. As fans you should also take solace in the fact that they've already made millions doing that movie so even if they don't get that stupid statue, they'll still manage to live another day.

So back to the original question, is there a recipe for a perfect award show? I don't know, because I don't usually watch either Filmfare or Oscars but I do like to see all the drama that goes on with it and come to think of it, if there was a perfect award show.....I'll miss out on all the drama, and as a movie buff who lives on discussions like these I don't want that to happen, do I? So go out there and enjoy the award shows and all the performances and if they ask you to vote for your favorite movie, make your vote count, otherwise just sit back relax and let the circus begin....