February 20, 1996
The secret agendas behind award shows
Awards season is here again. After warming up with the Golden
Globes and the American Music Awards, it’s time to get ready for
the Grammys and the Academy Awards. (Recently, I’ve noticed little
trade mark signs attached to mentions of the latter, so there’s
actually a chance that I’m infringing on somebody’s rights here by
not using them. Aah, the excitement of the ruthless life of a
columnist!)
And, most important of all, there is the upcoming Annual Heinz
Kapuschke Award (TM of Double-B, Inc., of Germany) for outstanding
silliness in a column written by a foreign exchange student.
With all the suspense surrounding the nominations and the choice
of winners, with all the predictions being made and bets being
placed, the No. 1 question right now is of course: Why do we even
care?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I like to argue about these things with
friends as much as the next guy (but I do prefer friends to next
guys), and I do watch and enjoy the award shows.
But if you really think about it, these events shouldn’t seem as
important to us as they do. After all, whether something wins an
award or not will hardly change the way you feel about it – what
you love and hate is not determined by the recognition it gets when
the time has come to dole out the statues.
Yet most of us do care, and we perceive these occasions as major
events. We do so because everything about the way they are
presented to us tells us that we should. If it’s all over the news,
it must be something really important.
So, why am I complaining about this? It certainly isn’t the only
thing on earth that is taken more seriously than it rationally
should be (just look at the Super Bowl). It’s good, harmless
fun.
The thing is, the whole affair isn’t quite as innocent as it
might seem. I believe that there is more going on than you’d
suppose.
They not only reflect the way we look at the particular field of
art in which an award is presented, they also condition – they
teach us how to see things. Our view of how certain things are
supposed to be (or, on a more fundamental level, how they just
plain are) is in part determined by this business of giving out
awards.
On the most obvious level, this happens by selecting specific
works or people as worthy of receiving a nomination or the coveted
trophy itself. The pretense of officiality that comes with these
big awards can easily make you forget that the process is
essentially no different from "Beavis and Butthead:" somebody
deciding what’s cool and what sucks. We are not dealing with truer
or deeper wisdom here, it’s all just opinion.
Before you accept award nominations as representing a standard
of what really constitutes good art, you should ask who’s making
the decisions and which interests are served by them. Often, the
interests won’t be yours.
Yet, this is still easy to see; it operates on a very conscious
level. In fact, most of the debates surrounding awards are about
not agreeing with the decisions made. But there is another, deeper
influence present in the way these events are set up, and this one
is a good deal less conscious, and therefore harder to discern.
While people might argue with the selections made for the
different categories, these categories themselves are taken for
granted and are not challenged. If there’s an award for it, it must
be something real, distinct and important. And this is where the
hidden agenda of awards resides: they make you accept as
quasi-natural a lot of values and boundaries that are anything but.
They perpetuate world views that could benefit from some critical
attention.
Yep, there you have it: finally exposed! People brainwashed by
the Oscars!
And since the Academy Awards are the biggest and most perfectly
staged of all the shows, let me use them as an example to make my
point clearer.
There’s a special category for Best "Foreign Film." At first
glance, this might not seem surprising, but if you look at what
exactly constitutes their "foreignness," and why some of them may
or may not be eligible for best film overall, you’re suddenly deep
in the territory of nationalism. It’s all about drawing
boundaries.
Or take the categories for performances. By distinguishing
between lead and supporting actors, the institution of the star
system is fortified, a system that has a lot to do with economics
and body politics.
And then there is the fact that performance awards are divided
by gender. No one seems to find this remarkable, yet separate
categories for male and female costume designers would seem
ridiculous. This tells us a lot about how and why we watch movies,
and at the same time, it aids in keeping things that way. Most
movies would lose any power to work if our concept of gender was
less strong.
Furthermore, the whole staging and presentation – the placement
of categories within the show – gives a very clear sense of what is
important and what we are supposed to really care about. In its own
way, it structures our experience of movies by telling us what we
should pay most attention to: directors and stars.
These awards are not the way they are by chance; and they want
to make you forget the alternatives.
It would do us good to remember the words of Czech master
director Frantisek Schlupp, explaining why he refused to accept any
kind of award: "Brt njoskarski je uzbilach, za razvitak."
(Actually, I haven’t got the faintest idea what it means, but I
still think it’s a good thing to remember.)
You should ponder this, while I go to prepare my acceptance
speech for the Heinz Kapuschke Award.
Thomas Willmann is a German exchange student at the musicology
department. His column appears every other Tuesday. He has a long
list of people he would like to thank.
Thomas Willmann
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© 1996 ASUCLA Communications Board
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