Post by normadesmond on Jul 1, 2009 1:29:52 GMT -4
They're probably feeling the negative effect of way too many awards shows. A lot of their prestige wasn't to do with their choice of nominees and winners, which everyone knows have been full of frequent blunders, but because they used to be the only game in town.
Now there's not the same excitement. Nobody goes, "Oh my God!!! Helen Mirren won for The Queen!! Didn't see that one coming!" It's more like, "Okay, here's where they announce Best Actress, get ready to collect your Oscar Helen." Nobody can get excited because most categories it's a foregone conclusion who the winner will be. Helen Mirren is a great actress, but how excited can you get for her when the Oscar turns out to be her, like, fiftieth award of the year for The Queen?
They simply aren't meaningful in the same way. Look at the IMDB stats. All these old Hollywood stars from the past, they either won Oscars or they won nothing. Maybe they had a film at Cannes and they picked up the odd prize there. But basically, the Oscars were it. The whole spiel was, "Well, it's an award given by your peers, that's why it's so meaningful." Yeah, well, now the SAG is also given by their peers, so if one person wins Best Actress at the SAG and someone else wins it at the Oscars, does that matter? How is the Oscar more prestigious than SAG? Just the force of tradition, really. But I think they're feeling a waning excitement about the Oscars, they know they're losing cultural significance, but they don't know what to do about it, so they're desperately trying all sorts of things. They're blaming it on a boring ceremony, but the ceremony was always way too long and boring, it's not the honorary Oscars that are causing the public to lose interest. It's a cultural shift. For a 13-year-old girl in love with Robert Pattinson, some MTV award or Teen Choice award is more meaningful than the Oscars nowadays.
They've been around for more than 80 years. That's a very good run. No institution, no tradition can be culturally dominant forever. All good things come to an end, and I just don't see how the Oscars can ever be as exciting to people as they once were. Other than the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, I don't think there's any prize related to the arts that's run for a longer timespan (I'm not including something like the Nobel Prize because it's for lifetime career achievement, not a newly published single book.)
Now there's not the same excitement. Nobody goes, "Oh my God!!! Helen Mirren won for The Queen!! Didn't see that one coming!" It's more like, "Okay, here's where they announce Best Actress, get ready to collect your Oscar Helen." Nobody can get excited because most categories it's a foregone conclusion who the winner will be. Helen Mirren is a great actress, but how excited can you get for her when the Oscar turns out to be her, like, fiftieth award of the year for The Queen?
They simply aren't meaningful in the same way. Look at the IMDB stats. All these old Hollywood stars from the past, they either won Oscars or they won nothing. Maybe they had a film at Cannes and they picked up the odd prize there. But basically, the Oscars were it. The whole spiel was, "Well, it's an award given by your peers, that's why it's so meaningful." Yeah, well, now the SAG is also given by their peers, so if one person wins Best Actress at the SAG and someone else wins it at the Oscars, does that matter? How is the Oscar more prestigious than SAG? Just the force of tradition, really. But I think they're feeling a waning excitement about the Oscars, they know they're losing cultural significance, but they don't know what to do about it, so they're desperately trying all sorts of things. They're blaming it on a boring ceremony, but the ceremony was always way too long and boring, it's not the honorary Oscars that are causing the public to lose interest. It's a cultural shift. For a 13-year-old girl in love with Robert Pattinson, some MTV award or Teen Choice award is more meaningful than the Oscars nowadays.
They've been around for more than 80 years. That's a very good run. No institution, no tradition can be culturally dominant forever. All good things come to an end, and I just don't see how the Oscars can ever be as exciting to people as they once were. Other than the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, I don't think there's any prize related to the arts that's run for a longer timespan (I'm not including something like the Nobel Prize because it's for lifetime career achievement, not a newly published single book.)
. Yeah, ok, not a wild, crazy prediction given the fact that he seems to have a really good year with a couple of high-profile movies.
Yeah, it will run longer and someone will get a special mention, not sure yet who...and I totally expect MJ to be mentioned.