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With this year’s Grammys set to air on Feb. 8, and the Oscars following shortly after on Feb. 22, I can’t help but ask myself the same question I ask every year: do awards shows matter? More specifically, do these programs represent the interests of both audiences and creators?
Yes, awards shows are made to entertain and advertise the nominees various products, but do they not also exist to give people something to aspire to? If that is the case, it’s clear award shows are failing these people, and have been for several years. Despite Lupita Nyong’o winning the award for Best Supporting Actress at last year’s Oscars, she remains only the sixth black actress to win the award in history.
To me, there is something inherently problematic about valuing an institution that has existed for 87 years that acknowledges minority talents less than one percent of the time. More importantly, there is something equally troubling about labeling this award as something to aspire to. Unfortunately, people will defend this visible racial bias as something merely reflecting panelists’ personal tastes. Some believe this discrepancy doesn’t neglect minorities for personal reasons, but merely chooses the most deserving candidate that just happens to be white almost every time.
While that defence is obviously flawed, it isn’t the only area award shows fail in. Awards shows are too often completely out of touch with the current generation’s culture, racial bias or not.
In the case of the Grammys, its voting panel has been disconnected with music, particularly with hip-hop, for the last 20 years. In fact, awards for the rap genre have only existed since 1989, despite its dominance, and at the time only included a single award category for Best Rap Performance. Though years have passed, and though they have since added the best album and song categories, some of their decisions have been questionable.
The Grammys in particular seem trapped in the tastes of those who run them. For example, in 1994 when Ready to Die, Illmatic and Outkast’s debut record were released, the judges felt Tony Bennett was more deserving of album of the year. Even in 2014 the rock music categories were not dominated by upcoming artists, but by Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin. Somehow, a re-release of the latter’s music from the 70s beat out newer artists to win an award in 2014.
What makes it worse is that these decisions don’t reflect sales, something that would be vaguely justifiable. For example, in 2001 the release of The Marshall Mathers LP lost Album of the Year to Steely Dan, despite being the best-selling record of the year. This means that not only do these decisions not reflect a nominee’s influence on the current generation, they don’t even reflect what the generation was interested in buying.
This kind of issue is unsurprising, as diversity is uncommon among those in power. For instance, the L.A. Times reported that the people who select the Oscar nominees and winners are 94 percent “white,” with 77 percent of the members being male, with an average age of 62. Because of this, I have a hard time believing these prestigious award shows represent anyone who isn’t an old white guy. While I may feel differently when I’m an old white guy, that’s certainly a problem to me now.
So to answer my earlier question of whether awards shows matter or not is tricky. To me they can only matter if they are something every person in the industry can realistically aspire to win. Right now, I do not believe this is the case. Until then, I’ll continue not taking these programs seriously, because if I wanted to know what a bunch of old white guys thought about music or movies, I would just ask my relatives at Christmas.
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Bahar Orang
ANDY Editor
So far, there have been two couples in my life that have made the strongest cases for marriage: my parents, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
The former has been an ongoing persuasion since as long as I can remember, where I grew up watching two people as they brought out the best in each other. The latter, however, were almost as swaying in a matter of moments and in a midst of smoke at the Grammys three nights ago. Although it’s true that what they offered was still part of their public image (it was on a stage after all), it was nonetheless a product I might someday be willing to buy.
They sang Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love,” which is essentially an anthem for their fantastic and enthralling sex life. And their performance was definitely sexy – but also fun, playful, and showed a partnership that seemed adventurous and exciting and powerful. Rarely do we see a portrayal of marriage in this light. It’s often about settling down, slowing down, reorganizing priorities so you are no longer at the top, having kids, getting a mortgage, staying home from work – being responsible and respectable and wearing white.
Although there’s nothing wrong with any of those decisions, none of it seems particularly appealing to me. I found it refreshing to watch a performance celebrating marriage for the professional, sexual, and creative fulfillment it can offer.
Cooper Long
ANDY Editor
At this year’s Grammy Awards, the only thing bigger than Pharrell Williams’ hat was the social media backlash. I didn’t watch the whole ceremony, but I was frequently checking in through Facebook, and amid the deluge of posts about the awards’ outrageous irrelevancy, one in particular caught my attention.
Aside from some grammatical polish, the comment was essentially as follows: “The music industry has changed, it’s not the 1970s anymore.” A few others echoed this sentiment, although names have been withheld to protect the innocent.
Such golden-age thinking should be familiar to anyone who has ever watched a Pink Floyd video on YouTube. Of course, the obvious rebuttal is that a lot of uninspiring music was also popular in the 70s. Over time, the chaff gets forgotten.
But this commenter’s paean to the music industry of yesteryear became especially ironic at the end of the evening, when the biggest award went to an album that sounds, for the most part, like it was recorded in 1979.
Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories won Album of the Year, and the helmeted duo shared the honour with a host of collaborators who rose to prominence four decades ago.
Before Nile Rodgers’ infectious strumming on “Get Lucky” made that song the official anthem of H&M change rooms worldwide, it could be heard on 70s disco chart-toppers by Chic and Sister Sledge.
Giorgio Moroder, in turn, was used to working with machines well before the robots recruited him. His synthesized backing tracks for Donna Summer laid the groundwork for electronic dance music in the mid-70s.
It is almost certainly true that the Grammys are irrelevant and pointless, although everybody who made this complaint online while simultaneously watching the telecast kind of undermined themselves.
But the stance that the awards somehow demonstrate the music industry’s fall from grace seems wrongheaded, especially in the year of the robots.
If pop culture has taught me anything, it’s that nothing screams wedding bells like Madonna dressed up as a kitsch cowboy and singing “Open Your Heart” with a voice that sounds like the voice of absolute death.
Two nights ago at the Grammys this nuptial call squawked loudly. After a performance of “Same Love” by Macklemore and Mary Lambert, Queen Latifah officiated the marriage of some 33 same sex and straight couples. With minimal lighting and the soft humming of a church choir accompanying her, she used the power vested in her “by the State of California… to celebrate love and harmony in every key and colour.”
I’m sure it was supposed to be a display of how marriage is supposed to work. I’m sure that it was supposed to be a call to incite change on conservative values. And I’m sure that the whole thing was supposed to be so damn beautiful.
But I felt an unsettling feeling gnaw at me as the camera panned from a same sex couple embracing to Macklemore signing to Taylor Swift nodding along to the same sex couple again. The whole shebang felt momentary and fleeting. What I saw was not a celebration; it was entertainment feeding off our animalistic sense of wanting to belong.
Let it be known that nothing takes away from the cherished moment of those couples. Nor can anyone reduce the magnificence of the marriages themselves. But what occurred was no less a pageantry. The performance was not beautiful for this was not its purpose and meaning. It was a stage, an act, a show. There was a curtain. There was a close. And people clapped during it all.
Everything was too superficial, too overdone. Whether it was the plastic-faced Madonna belting out some rickety tunes or Queen Latifah's over bearing excitement, throughout the entire closing act I did not see a sense of commemoration for the couples. They became ancillary to the show almost as though they were just basic props for a set – people who just stood around, waited for a queue, got married, and moved as instructed. I’m sure some even were told that crying looked good for the camera.
What the Grammys showed wasn’t so much a statement on politics as it was a product placement. Marriage became commoditized. It was bought and sold with advertisement time, celebrity status, and common gimmicks: a flash of one star crying, another, then the lights fade, the show is over, and we’re left there on our couches waiting for the next show to start. A commercial break hums a familiar tune in between.
