With the Oscars and all their shiny predecessors behind us for another year, it’s time to sign off on awards season and move on to something, anything, more interesting. But before we say goodbye, a quick minute for reflection: What would you do to improve awards season, whether that means fixes to an individual awards show, the way the media covers it, the people chosen to host it, or any other aspect of the phenomenon?
Tasha Robinson
Much like with election season, I wish the whole process could be shortened so it doesn’t drag on so—I wish we learned about the Grammy and Oscar nominees a week at most before the ceremonies, for instance, so we wouldn’t be subject to a month of analysis and chatter and second-guessing and industry lobbying and annoying ads. But that wouldn’t really serve the albums and artists and films in question particularly well: The gap between the nominees being released and the awards shows are a big financial boom for anything nominated, and people who aren’t jaded critics need the extra time to catch up on the nominees. So that’s just a selfish, idle wish on my part. Equally unlikely, since there’s no way to make it a rule and I’m just asking the universe to alter human nature: I wish there was a way to ensure no legacy awards, such that a given artist wins an award only for the film or album or performance from that year, rather than because they’ve been passed up too many times in the past and it’s so unfair, or because they didn’t win for that one film they probably should have won for a decade ago, or whatever. It always steams me to see a really good nominee passed up in favor of a so-so one solely in order to rectify old wrongs.
Claire Zulkey
I’m writing this the Thursday before the Oscars, so I don’t know if they’re going to continue it this year, but I could really do without the long individual introductions to the nominees, you know, the ones where a bunch of ladies who maybe worked with a given Best Actor nominee once stand around and talk about how handsome, strong, and talented he is? I already resent being “made” to stay up late on a Sunday night, and this not only prolongs the program, it turns the Oscars into more of a circle-jerk than it already is. When will these people realize that we don’t care what they say on the awards shows? Just show up, collect your shiny thing, and turn around so we can see what you’re wearing. Except for Hugh Jackman: I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him at the Oscars. Or any other awards ceremony.
Michaelangelo Matos
The Academy Awards’ period of eligibility is January 1 through December 31. The Emmy Awards’ are June 1 through May 30—ending when the traditional network prime-time season does. Those things make sense. But aside from the WTF taste of its voters (the Arcade Fire album nod was unprecedented in the awards’ history), one big reason the Grammys confuse everybody is because their period of eligibility is October 1 through September 30. Maybe there’s a good reason for it, but it’s been long lost to the mists of time, at least to anybody who isn’t an RIAA member. I realize asking the Grammys to make sense in any way whatsoever is to tempt the fate of the gods—or whoever the hell it was that decreed Celine Dion and Christopher Cross the makers of the finest album of any year at all—but please, for the love of Sinatra, make the Grammys’ year correspond with the calendar. You can even give Susan Boyle a sweep next year. (Just kidding. Please.)