Award shows overblown in terms of theatrics, not as important as people think they are

Evan Hatfield, Editor-in-Chief

The award for Most Insignificant Award Show goes to… all of them. “What?!?,” a disgruntled viewer shouts. Clearly, the decision hasn’t pleased everybody.

Here’s the thing – it doesn’t have to please everybody, and let’s face it, why should it have to? Heck, does it even matter?

My first problem is that some of these award shows even exist in the first place. The Academy Awards? Sure. The People’s Choice Awards? OK, I suppose. The American Country Awards? No. Just no.

There’s celebrating genuine accomplishments, and then there’s “Hey, look, we did our jobs again! Yay us!”

Most of the shows fall into the latter category. There needs to be moderation with these sorts of things – when you have a ceremony every other week, after a while, the very idea of an awards show loses its luster.

It doesn’t help that they all seem to follow the same basic format: host with comedic background does bits throughout the night that nobody in the audience seems to understand, award presenters phone in their effort and can barely be bothered to read the name off the card, winners come up and say something along the lines of “I don’t have much time to talk,” thus shortening their time even more, etc. etc. etc. I could go on…

That still doesn’t stop people from taking them all seriously. In the age of social media, the awards shows they seem to have on TV every other week seem more important than ever.

People will celebrate when whatever they were rooting for wins, and complain whenever something else takes the award instead. What impact does it have on anything, though?

Case in point: I was watching the People’s Choice Awards back in January (hey, there wasn’t much else on). I had been rooting for “Inside Out” to win the award for Best Animated Film, or something along those lines. “Minions” ended up winning. Was I angry? Of course.

I could have aired my grievances on Twitter or Facebook or something else, but I chose not to. Eventually, I sucked it up and moved on with my life. There’s more to existence than what film had an award bestowed upon it by some arbitrary committee.

Isn’t quality objective, anyway? Just because some people liked one movie more than another doesn’t automatically make it the better movie, or even make it any better than it was. “Minions” may have beat “Inside Out,” but consider this: which movie will have had the bigger impact five years from now? Hint: “Minions” probably won’t be that movie.

Put another way, it doesn’t have to win an Oscar, or a Grammy or an Emmy to be the winner of your own personal award for Best (insert category here), and awards are not a prerequisite to be considered “great.” It’s cliche, but it’s true. Why should Hollywood get to decide for you?