Life > January 20, 2005

By Christopher Browder

Old Gold & Black Reviewer

It is generally accepted that award shows are pretty lame by definition.  Despite our ability to form and defend our own opinions about the arts, America still finds it necessary to dedicate more and more nights out of the year to find out what the industry wants us to like. 

After all, how else are we supposed to know that Christina Aguilera was the best new artist of 1999? 

Extravagant award shows like the Grammys and the Oscars have become a walking contradiction: a nonessential necessity. 

I know what I like, and most of the time I do not even agree with the awards anyways. 

Yet I still have this underlying desire for the positive reinforcement of my own opinions by the critics and those in power. 

It is as if I will feel like my subjective beliefs will somehow be justified if the various academies of pretentiousness back me up.

The awards show that does this the best is easily the Academy Awards.  I cannot remember the last time I wholeheartedly agreed with the Oscars’ choices for films, actors or directors.

But without fail, if I see “won X number of Academy Awards” on the back of a DVD, it means something to me. 

I am fully aware that whatever awards the movie won were probably received due to some sort of covert, self-aggrandizing Hollywood conspiracy, but this immediately leaves my mind when I see the picture of that little gold statue. 

The Oscars somehow manage to manipulate and toy with my emotions year after year after year, and that is why I hate them.

The Golden Globes, on the other hand, I am okay with, and this is mainly due to one important fact: I do not care about them in any way. 

When a movie like The Aviator comes out, I do not say to myself, “that has Golden Globe written all over it,” even though it easily won the award for Best Drama this year. 

The press also realizes that the Golden Globes do not matter. 

In a recent article on CNN.com about this year’s Golden Globes, every result is followed by a lengthy discussion of how this can be used to predict the outcomes at the Oscars.  This is a clear contrast to the way that Oscar results are reported, as these results are merely presented as a means to an end, whereas the Oscars are portrayed as the end.  However, there is one thing the Golden Globes has that makes it infinitely better than the Oscars, and that is the category for musicals and comedies. 

This is the only place where brilliant movies that are serious and meaningful while also being funny and entertaining, such as this year’s winner “Sideways,” get the reward that they deserve.

While movies like “The Aviator” and actors like Sean Penn in “Mystic River” will always beat movies like “Sideways” and actors like Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation” at the Academy Awards, the musical/comedy area at the Golden Globes is an oasis of purity, unpretentiousness, and brilliance. 

But the truth is I still don’t really care.