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Before the pandemic put a temporary stop to awards shows, I was a red carpet/golden trophy junkie. I love the fashions, I love the ridiculous pomp and ceremony, and I love the dumb, meaningless joy that comes with watching other people’s elation.
I also love the way awards shows temporarily bring us together via watercooler moments that have mostly been lost since the advent of streaming, when cultural experiences can be quite fragmented and niche.
This Sunday is the Academy Awards (see Monday’s arts section for coverage from Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, or visit winnipegfreepress.com Sunday) and I’ll be soaking up the designer gowns, crossing my fingers for my favourite films and cursing the Oppenheimer juggernaut.
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But why do I care? What strange investment do I have in seeing my preferences win out? Why do I feel personally slighted when a group of strangers makes a largely subjective decision that contradicts mine about something in which I have no expertise whatsoever? (If the tender and harrowing Tunisian film Four Daughters doesn’t win documentary feature, I will be LIVID; I have not seen any of the other contenders.)
Four Daughters is partly a documentary, partly a metafictional experiment in which actors star alongside real people. (Kino Lorber photo)
It’s the same phenomenon that explains the popularity of concert reviews. Why do readers (and I include myself among them) love a rundown of an event that not only has already happened, but will never happen again?
It’s not like theatre or movie reviews, which act as a recommendation (or deterrent) for viewers to buy a ticket for an upcoming or ongoing show. It’s an attempt to trap in amber something that’s essentially ephemeral, even if most of today’s arena shows are note-for-note and banter-for-banter facsimiles; Hello, (Insert City Name Here)! (See also a very silly recent phenomenon where touring acts claim their drummer hails from whatever town they happen to be in.)
But concert reviews are consistently among the best-read arts stories on our website, and the thing we will get the most emails/calls about if we fail to provide them (other than crosswords and horoscopes, about which, holy cow, you guys are passionate).
And it’s not people who missed out on the show who are responding, but those who were in the seats who want to let us know where we went wrong, where we dropped the ball, what we failed to grasp or (sometimes) where we hit the nail on the head.
It’s part of why I champion critical arts writing — even if it espouses an opinion with which you vehemently disagree, it starts a conversation, a kind of replication of that watercooler chat we used to enjoy.
So I will be watching the Oscars Sunday night, hoping for a slap or a swan dress to liven up the proceedings and rooting for Maestro over Oppenheimer wherever I can.
Do you love awards shows? Or love to hate them?
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