photo credit: Malak Chaboub
Flashing cameras. Red carpets. Glambots. Winners. Losers. Snubs. All of these descriptions encapsulate the experience that is witnessing award shows. Hollywood has so many different award shows every year for various purposes, but the general public tends to take them a bit too seriously.
Award shows are not these perfect, classy events that they may seem on the surface. They’re filled with mistakes, controversial moments and a whole bunch of other silliness. There have been falls, streakers and slaps; award shows have seen it all. If TikTokers and influencers are attending all the award shows now, it’s time to accept that they are less classy now than they once were.
For starters, there have been a couple occasions in which the wrong winner has been announced, with the mistake later being caught. This causes so much chaos, confusion and hurt feelings.
For example, Steve Harvey announced the wrong winner for Miss Universe in 2015, and “La La Land” was falsely named Best Picture at the Oscars instead of “Moonlight” in 2017. Mistakes are a part of life, but it is really cringe-worthy and gives second-hand embarrassment to watch announcers realize that they have announced the wrong winner and try to fix it.
One of the craziest award show moments that really show how insane they can be was when Will Smith walked on stage at the 2022 Oscars and slapped Chris Rock in the face because of a comment Rock made about Smith’s wife. Rock made a comparison between Jada Pinkett Smith and Demi Moore in “G.I. Jane”, even though Pinkett Smith struggles with alopecia.
This slap created quite the uproar online, with many memes and comments made about it. The public discussed for days to weeks who was in the wrong in this situation. The internet loves drama, and award shows have plenty of it.
One of the biggest issues surrounding the conversation of award shows is the hypocrisy people have. For a recent example, people loved to whine about how it was “rude” of Taylor Swift to announce her album when accepting her Grammy but were perfectly fine with Beyonce releasing a song in the middle of the Super Bowl.
Make no mistake about it; this is not Beyonce shade, and she is an amazing artist. The point is that they both announced/released something new in the middle of huge events, yet people only found an issue with one of them. Truthfully, I see no problem with either of them doing what they have done.
Swift was accepting her own award; she can say what she wants. It doesn’t take away from any other artists’ wins of the night. It’s not like she went up on stage during someone else’s acceptance speech to talk about how she thought another artist should have won…like Kanye did to her.
The public can take awards very personally as well. In 2020, Billie Eilish swept the Grammys as a newer artist and took home some of the biggest awards. This had people outraged and many people online expressed how they thought Eilish shouldn’t have won. People need to calm down and let the young artist celebrate her wins. I know people will be sad if who they wanted to win doesn’t, but they should not be taking it out on the winners.
Honestly, award shows just need to be taken less seriously by the public. Yes, these awards surely are meaningful to the celebrities winning usually, but they’re still just a bunch of rich celebrities at events together that are also used for attention. It can be sad to not have a favorite celebrity or media that does not win an award that might’ve felt deserved, but an award doesn’t signify the only value of a project or artist.
