You'd think that I would dislike "awards season" because of the pomp and ceremony disproportionally employed for such a vacuous event. You'd think I'd dislike it because of the ignorant, grinning maws of the wealthy all primped and preened, ready to be handed a piece of metal that symbolises exclusivity while the rest of the world starves. You'd think I might object to people crying at receiving the relatively pointless recognition they've been so desperately trying to attain through years of an unhinged personality defect. You may even consider that I would be irritated by the inability of anyone who thanks a god in their speech to realise that if their deity loves everyone then he couldn't possibly have had anything to do with giving that award to them specifically. And, predictably, you'd be right.
I understand the need to party and it's nice to get all dressed up but why do we need extreme close-up analysis of every aspect of a garment that very strategically protects little but the bleached detail of Jennifer Lopez's anal passage from our eyes? Although who knows; it could be our vision that needs protection from it. Anyway, this has resulted in people inventing a job called "fashion expert" and other people giving them money to spout monosyllabic nonsense at a camera in such a fanatical manner that you wouldn't be surprised to hear that they'd broken into a celebrity's house, made off with a wardrobe's worth of party dresses and then got into a bath with them, maniacally grinding beads and sequins into every accessible cleft. No, that doesn't sound suspiciously specific.
Strangely though, it seems to come down to mathematics; I don't think my reaction would be so visceral if everyone voted together as that would at least give some statistical gravitas to the results. But not only are they splintered into every possible sub-niche but some of them are simply decided by a bunch of old men in a room. Exciting and exclusive I'm sure you'll not agree. You can go into pretty much any retirement home (especially with the right cover story, believe me) and get hours of opinion on the state of the entertainment industry. How many individual award shows does society need? Besides none, I mean. Let me rephrase the question: what would be a sensible amount of award shows to have televised and reported on by the news media? Oh dammit, same again. I'll get back to you when I have formed a question you can't answer with a wryly-raised eyebrow.
Even if I accept (and I don't) that we have all of these shows and that they're here to stay, there's still a gaping hole in the arrangement; where are the televised awards for industries that mean something like - and these are just a few examples - nursing, fire-fighting, youth-working, general humanitarianism; that sort of deal. And I definitely don't count those "bravery" ones where a bunch of people who actually did things each get an opportunity to be patronised for two minutes by the tag-team of corporate teat-sucking known as Ant and Dec. I'm continually surprised that they manage to record those shows, given how much the human body should convulse when offered a prize for nobility by a duo whose bravest act is to continue to call themselves entertainers after proudly hosting a show that is essentially about making people fellate spiders.
Somehow, whole industries will continue to be kept afloat by this bizarre parade of affluence. I have to wonder how long it will be before human evolution causes them to be shamed out of existence, but I also must worry that shame itself has already evolved to make this behaviour acceptable.
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