On reading this article, I could not help but be reminded of the video shown in class where the most versatile and respected Indian actor, Naseeruddin Shah, describes the whole concept of presenting awards to be an abysmal show that only tries to please rather than appreciate. The author seems to convey the same.
From all the Bollywood award ceremonies that I've seen, it always happens that when a judging committee presents the award to a particular actor, all the other awarding panels follow suit. The judging criteria is now "Who is popular" rather than "Who is the best". A similar situation occurred when A.R.Rahman won the Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire. While the movie was a massive hit (God knows why?!), a sizable majority felt the background score wasn't good enough to bag the Oscar. This said, one important thing to note is that popular is what sells and the best is not always popular. Hence to keep the masses happy and entertained, it becomes imperative to award the popular individual. People are enamored by the outer shell and fail to see the substance within.
From the authors point of view, I find that he seems to have developed a bias right from when he was young. He seems to stress on all the awarding decisions that went wrong and fails to bring to light the ones that went right. It's not "always" that the wrong person wins. There have been several situations where the award has been presented to the most deserving candidate.
You make a few valid points: 1) best does not equal popular, and judges are in a bind to keep critics and audiences happy, so what to do? 2)the author celebrates his bias, and his use of "always" is such a signpost to this bias. Perhaps we should consider his intention in writing this article? Nice post, Sreshta!
ReplyDelete