It is not just the celebrity allure. It is the public, acclaim, the attention, the limelight.
It’s a cut above all.
Everytime you turn around, someone’s winning an award for something. There are many reasons why the nation seems caught in an obsessive pursuit of recognition. There seems to be no field of human endeavor without them, and no shortage of groups eager to give their version of a statuette with a funny name, trophies to knock you out. Every year these inanimate objects of recognition command audience and speak incalculable joy, jealousy and gaiety.
These passing of awards essentially, over the same things— for movies, arts and entertainment, civic or professional excellence, journalism, perhaps even worse, because in addition to the famous Pulitzer prize, there are scores of national awards meant to praise outstanding media coverages, from the presidency, to a plane crash, even coup d’etat and bone surgery or volcanic eruptions. It was always the more, the merrier.
Awards can be quite unusual and inventive, but tokens of recognition could be double edged swords. It can swathe through it. There are real risks of resentment and jealousy as if it is viewed as just a latest gimmick, in a process dominated by the politics of a specific field. People can be cynical.
But the untold amount of good buzz it produces outweighs the sentiments of those who are supposed to mock the pretensions and self importance of awards. When they have been seduced by the siren call of acclaim, no mantle piece should be bared.
It is always a big, big deal—that maybe, well, the understatement of the year, considering the obsession culture of awards, as a whole.
In the Fil-Am community, part of their appeal comes from this format which closely resembles the classic variety shows which can serve up music, dance, a prestigious beauty pageant on the same program and as the night rolled, there will be a few pleasant surprises that continue to draw a widely diverse audience.
The show, far beyond their astute awardees and all its glitter and its ferocious supporters only needs a host and awardees. It does not need the plenitude and often grandiose tone of most award nights in patching together a show. No one grows immune to the charms and sophisticated rhetoric, of a glib producer.
The best part is it can draw and charm celebrities, usually without pay as productions become a big, huge self promotion among the awardees, the crème dela crème of the community, but nevertheless, who regards peer acknowledgment as basic full force fulfillment of the deepest human desire and yearning for acceptance and recognition—that indescribable addiction for affirmation.
And if the audience is lucky, there were no feigned humility or mammoth egos or blinding jewelries that can feed a small nation. The real gems of the show might, but just, a supply of rare glimpse into the very human unscripted side of the awardees, as their friends scream their greetings.
Like a compass through the storms of art and other noteworthy human endeavors, the awards culture, that human obsession for recognition and accolade is here to stay…at its own price.
But we will still worship the fantasy that its great panacea. When doors open and new friends ooze out of the woodwork, when it becomes the stepping stone, that one may collects its rose.
Myself included, I’m beginning to think.
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E-mail Mylah at [email protected]
