“I would like to thank the producers, our director, all the cast and crew, it couldn’t have been made without you. Thanks to my mom and dad for always believing in me, but, most importantly, thank you to the Academy for granting me this award!”, a quote used by many acceptance speeches throughout the history of award shows. Apart from the various achievements, what’s the story behind the awards?
Award shows are usually founded by an Academy or Associations. These shows were formed in the early 20th century, and with these old foundations their outdated beliefs continued through most of their awards. The members of the different academies have shown a rare history of diversity in the past. Though they are trying to be more inclusive within themselves, they have not made as much as an effort in the past. These Associations also ignore some of their own contraversives. For example the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) former president Philip Berk had been accused of assaulting Brendan Fraser. For the HFPA they decided to rarely incite him back to the award ceremonies, ignoring the issue.
Award shows also tend to stray away from nominating people who are different from a white man. In the entire history of the Oscars, only eight women have ever been nominated for Best Director, as well as only 28.8% of all nominations in the past decade prior to this year have gone to women. Only 89% of the nominations in the past decade prior to this year have gone to white people. This example of one award show reflects almost all of the other award shows and their problem with diversity.
Apart from the problems with the foundations of the award shows there is also the controversial idea of personal bias of the viewers. We all want our favorite people to win and will not take into account the different options in the nominations. People will set their expectations to be what majority of the people want to win, but forget it’s not a people’s choice award. These awards are given out based on looking closely into each film, tv show, or song and figure out what is the best of them. The average person doesn’t take into consideration all of
Combining all these ideas is the aspect of controversy, and controversy is what makes people watch these shows. People want entertainment and so they look towards these Hollywood stars to do something that will entertain them. This entertainment is used in all the many controversies like the moment in which Will Smith went up on stage at the Oscars and slapped Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife. Though these moments cause many problems to parties involved, as viewers it entertains and people can’t wait for the next thing to happen.
These award shows are trying to make themselves popular with the younger crowd by trying to attract them with TikTok influencers going to these award shows and attempting to bring attention. With these influencers the award shows are attempting to appeal to younger audiences and falling short. The award shows have the idea that they can involve these people that are only popular because of an app and putting them in a place that’s not made for their own specific content. Though these influencers draw attention, award shows should not try to target everybody, but target those who care. Award shows need to find a way to attract the younger generation without destroying their entire foundation; that is where they are trying too hard. They already have attractions from many different people and communities. The different shows’ fear of becoming irrelevant is slowly destroying their shows.
Overall the attempt of award shows to modernize and make their shows relevant only highlights their downfalls in the modern world. The controversy of these award shows is the overtaking factor of this new era of award shows and the ideas of change.
(All information is prior to 2023 awards)