IT is not just the celebrity allure. It’s the cut above all. It’s the public acclaim, the attention, the limelight.
Every time 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 and trophies to knock you out. Every year these inanimate objects of recognition command an audience and speak incalculable joy, jealousy and gaiety.
These passing of awards are essentially over the same things: the movie business, arts and entertainment, civic or professional excellence, and journalism. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, there are scores of national awards meant to praise outstanding media coverage, from the presidency, crashes, coups d’état and even surgeries. It was always the more the merrier.
Awards can be quite unusual and inventive, but tokens of recognition could be double-edged swords. They can swathe through, and there are real risks of resentment and jealousy if they are viewed as just the latest gimmick, in a process dominated by the politics of a specific field. People can be cynical, but the untold amount of good buzz that they produce 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 that no mantle piece should be bare.
In the Fil-Am community, part of the appeal comes from a format which closely resembles the classic variety show—which 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, all its glitters and 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 of a show is that it can draw and charm celebrities—usually without pay—where productions become a big, huge self-promotion among the awardees, and the crème dela crème of the community. Nevertheless, it regards peer acknowledgment as the 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, mammoth egos, or blinding pieces of jewelry that can feed a small nation — even in these desperate economic times. The real gems of the show might be but just a supply of rare glimpses into the very human and unscripted side of the awardees, as their family 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 their great panacea is when doors open, new friends ooze out of the woodwork, and they become a stepping stone.