What’s first thing that comes to the mind whenever you consider ‘Oscars’ or ‘Golden Globes’? Prestige. It’s different in regards to desi counterparts such as the 60 year old ‘Filmfare Awards’ or the much younger ‘Life OK Screen Awards’ (21 year old). ‘Oscars’, ‘Golden Globes’ and ‘Filmfare’ have one thing in accordance – an extended legacy spanning over a half century. Oscar celebrates 87th year in 2015 whereas Golden Globes celebrates 72th year. Hollywood awards are known for their fair and transparent process in selecting the winners. Over 6000 elite Academy members vote for Oscars to pick the yearly winners. In terms of Golden Globes, it constitutes 93 prominent journalists from all around the world, who’re members of Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), in the voting panel. When looking back, we are able to note that these two major awards had a clean run without many controversies questioning their legitimacy & the selection process. Obviously, a calculated campaigning can still sway the Oscar & Golden Globe voters – to some extent (as we witnessed in the event of Shakespeare In Love in 1999 and Crash in 2015)! Brushing aside such minor hiccups, these awards continue to remain relevant and prestigious. The exact same can’t be said concerning the Bollywood awards. Especially since we’ve a dozen new award shows, the prestige is the past thing they’re bothered about. bigg boss telugu vote
Where are Bollywood awards heading?
Well, it’s not heading to a wonderful place – that’s certain! Controversies and corruption make it quite difficult for the Award shows to remain relevant & significant. Speaking of Filmfare awards, it’s a favorite award. The subscribers of the Filmfare magazine decide the winners through voting (however, they introduced critic’s choice awards for few major categories to create it less dull). As all of us know, public is not at all times the best judge in regards to quality of movies, acting and technical prowess. As Oscars realized, individuals who work in the business are the best to judge the merit of a video or artist. Now it’s too late for Filmfare awards to change their format. So, let’s not hound them on that matter. However, at the least they may be honest and fair in the way they select the favorite awards. Invest the a deeper look, despite giving good performances and milestone movies, Aamir Khan and his movies always missed Filmfare awards. Same could be said about Ajay Devgn as well. To refresh your memory, both Aamir Khan and Ajay Devgn spoke against the politics behind award shows. Aamir Khan boycotted most of the award shows (of course, except National Awards and Oscars). Time and again, we hear allegations that these awards are ‘fixed’ ;.It’s not only stars, fans likewise have spoken against the dirty picture behind awards.
Award shows are becoming an enormous televised event in India involving big money. So TRP matters. Who brings TRP? Big stars, who else! Don’t think that it’s different in Hollywood. ABC, which will be under contract to broadcast Oscars until 2020, resorts to all sorts of circus to increase the TRP of Oscars (did you forget Ellen Degenerator’s selfie stunt during last year’s Oscar Ceremony?) However, in Hollywood big stars don’t ask for cash or favours to wait these awards. If they are nominated they will definitely arrive at the red carpet and graciously cheer the winner despite their bitter losses. They understand the fact maintaining a healthy ecosystem of awards is a necessity for ensuring quality. In Bollywood, we hear all sorts of stories concerning the insane demands of stars in regards to attending award shows.’ If you are not going to offer me an award and then don’t bother sending an invitation’ – this seems to be the motto of all of the major stars, in accordance with various reports. This results in hilarious award categories. For the ‘best actor’ category, some award shows give up to 5 different awards (best actor in a thriller, best actor in a dilemma, best actor in a comedy and goes on)! Chances are they invent very creative award categories to support a particular demanding actor! There is a current controversy regarding music awards, where Honey Singh was handed best music director award ignoring A R Rahman & Amit Trivedi!
Bollywood fans have now been discussing concerning the pointlessness of Bollywood awards on social media marketing like Twitter and Facebook. It looks like everyone except award show organizers is aware of this growing criticism. Speaking of Oscars, we’ve something similar in Bollywood. IIFA (Indian International Film Awards), which came directly into existence in 2000, is a global Bollywood award show where nominations & winners are selected by peers in the industry. The glossy award function is generally held at an international venue outside India. Nevertheless, they keep honouring minimal deserved winners. Moreover, they’re not far behind in regards to hilarious categories.
In short, Bollywood award scene is a big mess right now. This is largely caused by the fact industry is disorganized to the core. They don’t have unity – they don’t have functional organizations for the actors and technicians. If they’d, it would have been easier in order for them to conduct their own award show modelled on Oscars. For the reason that case, a trusted outside agency (an agency named PricewaterhouseCoopers has the responsibility for tabulating Oscar votes) are designed for the voting process to prevent politics and corruption. Also, it’d force the stars to wait the awards without requesting favours. This type of move could cleanup the system. But who’s going to do that? The leading actors are at loggerheads most of the time. They fight over everything and their cold wars and camp systems are infamous in Bollywood. Therefore it could be a lot to expect them to do something about this mess.