When Did Award Shows Get So Lame?
Once upon a time, award shows used to be the talk of the town. Everyone would crowd around the TV to watch the VMA’s, Grammy’s, BET Awards, Source Awards, etc. That was quite some time ago. Today, award shows have turned into a frolicking parody of themselves. The awards don’t seem to mean much anymore (unless you win a Grammy or an Oscar, but even then…) and 90 percent of people tune in just to see the performances—which have become pretty lackluster as well.
Over the past couple of years, the quality of award shows has plummeted. Some are just lame with their ploys for laughter and shock, while others are just flat-out bad in their execution.
Take, for example, this year’s MTV Movie Awards. As funny as Aziz Ansari is with his sketch comedy segments, he fell quite hard as host. The rest of the show was basically a figure skater that kept falling but had to finish his/her routine. The performances were yawn-inducing, the Jersey Shore plugs were nauseating and that lip-locking segment with Sandra Bullock and Scarlett Johansson was so 2003. All in all, nothing to record and watch again.
But the MTV Movie Awards are certainly not the only award show that has pulled up lame in recent years. Remember the 2009 BET Awards debacle show? Sure, the passing of Michael Jackson weighed heavy on the show, but the presentation itself was pretty lousy. The talk of last year’s MTV Video Music Awards surrounded Kanye West crashing Taylor Swift‘s acceptance speech. Do you remember anything else about the award show? Me neither.
Some award shows can’t even get the attention of the artists who win the awards. Some decide that an award show isn’t the best opportunity to perform while others simply have better things to do. The awards themselves are a batch that often are a foregone conclusion; for example, Nicki Minaj‘s BET Awards nomination for “Best Female Hip-Hop Artist.” They might as well just give her the award now and tell her to bring it with her on the night!
There was a time when award shows would bring out the best performances and the awards actually meant something to the general public. Performances were moments in history that would forever be etched into our minds. Madonna performing “Like A Virgin” at the 1984 VMA’s, Diddy performing “I’ll Be Missing You” in 1997 after Biggie‘s death, the Death Row Records crew performing at The Source Awards in 1994 and a variety of others all meant something. Today? The award shows are mere fodder for the networks to advertise new shows and push the artists they love.
The only reason everyone tunes in to watch award shows nowadays is so they can log on to Twitter and share their disgust thoughts with others. That part is actually pretty fun. Outside of that? Negative.
Let’s hope the people behind these shows find a way to make them the must-watch entertainment they once were. Until then, you can catch me on Twitter grumbling and laughing with the rest of them.
I agree with this. Public Enemy once asked “who gives a f*** about a god damn Grammy” but as someone who grew up with the Grammy’s and some decent performances from the AMA’s, I cared. A Grammy meant accomplishment, you didn’t have to be a success but that was part of it. Now, it’s like watching a TV show about commercials, so instead of watching a show with five or six commercial breaks, you’re watching an hour of solid ads. Yes, I want to be entertained too but I don’t want to have to see everything look like a Billboard ad.
With that said, there’s a guy named Gary Vaynerchuk who wrote a book about success and how to achieve it, and he basically said that we are now part of a generation where advertising is expected, that everyone is now out there to promote not only themselves, but the product they endorse or the product they want you to buy. You don’t make it by talent alone, and yet those same talentless people are the ones getting chosen for awards. Or worse: to have a career that hasn’t lasted for more than two years and you’re already getting a lifetime achievement award, while older artists contemplate selling their music to advertisers or to video game creators because “that’s the new way to survive: by killing what came before you”.
People are being rewarded, but for what? As for the BET award shows in the last year, they need to have a producer who has a sense of how to edit/”trim the fat”. When Justin Bieber wins that award, let’s see if there are any changes to the formula.
It’s so crazy.