I don’t think there’s any doubt that Americans are a
gambling people. As a nation, we love the appeal of get-rich-quick
schemes, and it’s no surprise that the potential to make
money by chance has made Las Vegas the country’s
fastest-growing city.
We’ll bet on just about anything, from sporting events to
the chances of an event happening. In “Guys and Dolls,”
a classic American musical about, well, gamblers, a character is
hailed and admired because at one point, he bet a hefty amount that
one raindrop would beat another raindrop down a window. It’s
not that far from the truth.
With the Super Bowl occurring in a few days, updated gambling
lines are reviewed as seriously as a professor’s study guide
for a final. But where will our attention turn come Monday
morning?
Strangely enough, the Oscars. The Golden Globes are over, the
nominations came out Tuesday, and before you know it, Entertainment
Weekly will publish its annual arbitrary handicap of every Oscar
nominee’s chance of winning, from Best Picture favorite
“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” to Best
Live-Action Short unknown “Squash.”
And like most things published in Entertainment Weekly,
we’ll pretend to ignore it but secretly read it and love
every word. And we’ll study it. And we’ll use it in our
Oscar pools, thinking we have some sort of inside information, not
realizing every other person in the pool has read the same
magazine. Because honestly, how many people know enough about the
nominees for Best Live-Action Short to be able to make a prediction
on their own?
But there’s a difference between declaring the New England
Patriots a seven-point favorite over the Carolina Panthers and,
like last year, declaring Roman Polanski an 8-1 underdog to win
Best Director (according to oddsmakers at www.betwwts.com). While
the Panthers are capable of causing their own upset,
Polanski’s win had nothing to do with Polanski competing
against anyone. In other words, I doubt he was on the set of
“The Pianist” thinking he had to direct a scene a
certain way to draw attention away from Martin Scorsese
(“Gangs of New York”), Rob Marshall
(“Chicago”) and Stephen Daldry (“The
Hours”), who were all favored above him.
And more often than not, movies made specifically to get Oscar
attention don’t end up the favorites: See every Tom Cruise
movie.
For the top six Oscars last year, only three favorites won,
stressing the relative difficulty in handicapping the awards. But
with underdogs winning half the statuettes, the situation should
also spark questions over the accuracy and usefulness of such
odds.
And beyond that, doesn’t it seem insulting to an underdog
who wins to have been considered an underdog? Everyone knows the
Oscars, or any award given out for artistic merit, are highly
subjective, so having winners who weren’t
“supposed” to win almost implies they shouldn’t
have won at all, even though they did.
Daniel Day-Lewis (“Gangs of New York”) was a 4-5
favorite to win Best Actor last year, so when Adrien Brody
(“The Pianist”), a 9-2 underdog, won, it felt as though
Day-Lewis was stripped of an award he had already won. Upset
victories have no place in awards shows because they hand out the
awards before they’re handed out.
The whole idea behind having presenters say “And the Oscar
goes to …” instead of “And the winner is …”
is to acknowledge how subjective the awards are.
And do you really think Las Vegas oddsmakers or the staff of
Entertainment Weekly knows better than the Academy who should win
an Oscar? Don’t answer that question.
So consult your Entertainment Weekly while filling out your own
Oscar ballot, but don’t treat it as if it were the Gospel. If
you do, you’ll be depriving yourself of four fantastic
alternatives.
Tracer thinks Shohreh Aghdashloo deserves to win for Best
Supporting Actress, even though she is a 15-1 underdog. E-mail him
your picks at jtracer@media.ucla.edu.