Who's With Me?

“I’m just a girl who had a dream.” – Hilary Swank, Best Actress, 77th Annual Academy Awards.

A dream to what? To self congratulate yourself for getting a job and doing it well in front of millions of people?

While the 78th Annual Academy Awards kick off on Sunday, March 5th, I’m not going to be watching them. No really, I’m not. What’s the point? This year, for the first time ever, I’m going to sit at home and not watch the Academy Awards.

The reason is simple. The Oscars, as they are known in slang, are nothing more than an exclusive group of people getting together and patting themselves on the back because they make millions and millions of dollars.

While obviously this entertainment journalist is biting the hand that feeds him, it’s about time somebody stood up and told the truth. The Academy Awards are a pointless display of frivolity. It’s an awards ceremony that has become more than it ever should have been allowed to become.

What really are the Academy Awards? In reality, they are nothing. They are awards that reward an industry that is in love with itself. An award that is somehow supposed to justify why actors, actresses, directors and everybody in between makes millions of dollars a year while us little people must grovel at their feet and most of the time, perform a job that is both more important and more rewarding.

In all honesty, any secretary or person working at McDonalds works harder than an actor. What does an actor do all day anyway? “Prepare” for a role in their trailer? Don’t let any actor blow smoke at you and tell you that their craft is hard. It isn’t. Either you’re a great actor or you’re not and these people get awards for pretending to be somebody else. Last time I checked that’s called multiple personality disorder. Aren’t people supposed to see a shrink for that?

Where are the volunteer awards? Maybe they should broadcast those, where volunteers from all over the world are nominated for helping others or creating a positive change. Or, what about the plumbing awards? A bunch of plumbers could get together and whoever’s done the best plumbing this year and charged the most amount of money, to a ratio of letting their bum crack hang out for the prospective receiver of the plumbing to see. It sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? Well, the Academy Awards are just that.

Basically, a group of people who are fellow actors, actresses, screenwriters and the like nominate each other for a job well done. To be able to vote, people have to be exclusive members of a “guild” in Hollywood. These people then walk around patting each other on the back, exclaiming how its always been their dream to get into this exclusive club and win a pointless award.

Maybe it sounds like I’m bitter. Well, I am. I’m bitter because of the level of stock that is continuously put into getting nominated or winning one of these awards. They don’t make you important. It’s a statue that’s been given to you by a co-worker because you did better work than them last year.

The people that should be voting for these awards, us, the people, don’t have a say. We just have to watch and be told who did a great job. The audience doesn’t have a choice because in their eyes, we are far too stupid to know what art really is. I mean, our wallets reward bad movies so there’s no way that we’d be able to comprehend the difference between film editors or special effect supervisors. I mean, you’ve seen one computer graphic, you’ve seen them all, right?

Folks, it’s all an elaborate setup of smoke and mirrors to make you think you are watching history unfold when in reality you are watching the con men of our time. Instead of going door to door to sell their wares, we go to the theatre to voluntarily give them our money.

And then, by giving them all this money and by heaping on them awards that they think are important, these Hollywood types think it gives them free reign to be political and speak their minds. What an oxymoron that is. You’re actors. You get paid to not be yourself for a reason.

Check in next week and I’ll tell you exactly who’s going to win and why. Just because I’m not going to watch the awards doesn’t mean I can’t write about it. Ahh, who am I kidding. I’m going to watch them and I’m going to love them.