Reflections on a Golden Gong
Award season is technically over, but I've been thinking about something that's been bugging me since the Oscars, and I think it's finally crystallized enough to write about.
We've reached a point where awards shows exist primarily as content generators for the internet. The actual awards — who wins, who loses, who gets snubbed — matter less than the GIFs, the memes, the reaction shots, the fashion commentary, and the hot takes that pour out of social media in real time. The show itself has become secondary to the discourse about the show.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some of the funniest, smartest cultural criticism I've read this year has been in tweets fired off during award ceremonies. But it does change what these events mean. When the primary experience of an awards show is watching it through the filter of other people's commentary, the event itself becomes a kind of raw material to be processed rather than a thing to be experienced.
The celebrities know this, of course. Every red carpet appearance is calculated for maximum social media impact. Every acceptance speech is workshopped to go viral. Every outfit is chosen with the understanding that it will be dissected by millions of people who weren't actually there. It's performance all the way down.
What I miss — and I realize this makes me sound like an old man yelling at clouds — is the idea that a really good performance or a really great film might speak for itself, without needing to be packaged into a narrative about representation or snubs or industry politics. Sometimes a movie is just a movie, and sometimes an actor is just very good at pretending to be someone else, and that should be enough.
But it's not enough anymore, and I'm not sure it ever will be again. The gong has been struck, and we're all just listening to the reverberations.