The glittering sham!

Let us face it, cinema awards are usually controversial. More so if they are from Bollywood, though you would be slightly assured as a fan that there are times when even Oscar awards have had their share of controversies. Having said that the voting system of Oscars is a bit mature which blesses it with some semblance of professionalism.

The scene in India every year moves from bad to worse. Most of us know the now famous unwritten boycott of Bollywood awards that Aamir Khan has been practising for years now, it all started when Aamir was deprived of an award for ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander’ and since then that movie is more remembered for the controversy than its content.

The biggest problem that the Indian cinema, particularly Bollywood awards, has that there is no or zero credibility for most of these awards, which are owned by a certain media house and a lot of media channels in the electronic medium does not carry the stories about them or cover them because no one wants to cover a competitor. Add the fact that some of the prominent awards are backed by a TV house too so some awards get unabashed and unfair coverage some other ones. In fact, awards are even bartered at times as Akshay Kumar once famously claimed that he was asked to do dance numbers for an award on stage by a famous award ceremony group of Bollywood.

The National Awards could have been the answer to being that third-party institution of perfect awards, however, with electronic media ignoring these beyond a point because they have their own awards to protect and then governments ways of executing these awards have made them more like a necessary yearly ceremony value than public respect. In short National Awards are more respected by those who win it, the public rarely is involved.

In fact, National Awards also have had their share of controversy in last few decades. Sometimes a hard-hitting movie that criticises the government of the day is not just nominated or sometimes a current favourite matinee idol is given an award just to keep him or her loyal to the powers that be and before you jump to the conclusion this has been taking place since the 60s.

This year, however, another act of complete arrogance was unleashed by a famous award held by one of India’s most respected film media publication. Let us not name it though for a lot many of you it will not be difficult to hard guess which one it was. The said award has already declared awards for 2018 when the year was a still four weeks away from getting over. Some big banner movies are yet to be released and some of them have some of the biggest makers and actors involved. If you were to draw a parallel it was like Oscars being released without waiting for ‘Silence of the Lambs’ in that year.

What made the whole circus laughable was how media groups congratulated the winners. How the winners went about tom-toming their trophies in the media and social media. How the fans went berserk. In all this, no one pointed out the blatant act of unfair blocking of some deserved actors. For example, without a doubt Gajraj Rao’s was a great performance in ‘Badhaai Ho’, but how can we so certain that Tigmanshu Dhulia would not be equally appealing in ‘Zero’? The point is not to degrade Gajraj Rao. The point is fairness. As such whenever a certain actor is recommended over someone else then there is a fan group which gets agitated but at least an award function should show that they have judged all the nominees of that year.

It will obviously take us years to get something which is as credible and consistent as an Oscar, but private award owners are the most competent ones to show the way and over the years through consistency, we could start looking forward to these. In fact, the whole act of these awards being announced sooner than the year itself ending was probably the hunger to be the fastest. TRP is where all media virtue melts.

– cinemawaalebaba. blogspot.com