What is the first thing that concerns the mind whenever you think of ‘Oscars’ or ‘Golden Globes’? Prestige. It’s not the same 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 a very important factor in accordance – a lengthy legacy spanning over a half century. Oscar celebrates 87th year in 2015 whereas Golden Globes celebrates 72th year. Hollywood awards are noted for their fair and transparent process in selecting the winners. Over 6000 elite Academy members vote for Oscars to select the yearly winners. In terms of Golden Globes, it constitutes 93 prominent journalists from all over the world, who’re members of Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), in the voting panel. When looking back, we could observe that these two major awards had an easy run without many controversies questioning their legitimacy & the choice process. Needless to say, 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 keep relevant and prestigious. Exactly the same can not be said about the Bollywood awards. Especially since we have several new award shows, the prestige is the final thing they are bothered about. bigg boss telugu vote
Where are Bollywood awards heading?
Well, it’s not maneuvering to a good place – that’s certain! Controversies and corruption make it very difficult for the Award shows to keep relevant & significant. These are Filmfare awards, it’s a well known award. The subscribers of the Filmfare magazine decide the winners through voting (however, they introduced critic’s choice awards for few major categories to make it less dull). As all of us know, public is not necessarily the most effective judge in regards to quality of movies, acting and technical prowess. As Oscars realized, the people who work available are the most effective to judge the merit of a movie or artist. Now it’s too late for Filmfare awards to improve their format. So, let’s not hound them on that matter. However, at the least they can be honest and fair in the way they select the favorite awards. For a deeper look, despite giving good performances and milestone movies, Aamir Khan and his movies always missed Filmfare awards. Same can 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 these awards are ‘fixed’ ;.It’s not merely stars, fans also have spoken against the dirty picture behind awards.
Award shows have grown to be 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 is under contract to broadcast Oscars until 2020, resorts to a number of circus to boost 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 money or favours to go to these awards. If they are nominated they’ll definitely appear at the red carpet and graciously cheer the winner despite their bitter losses. They understand the fact that maintaining a healthier ecosystem of awards is absolutely essential for ensuring quality. In Bollywood, we hear a number of stories about 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 appears to be the motto of the majority of the major stars, in accordance with various reports. This results in hilarious award categories. For the ‘best actor’ category, some award shows give as much as 5 different awards (best actor in a thriller, best actor in an episode, best actor in a comedy and goes on)! They invent very creative award categories to allow for a certain demanding actor! There is a recent controversy regarding music awards, where Honey Singh was given best music director award ignoring A R Rahman & Amit Trivedi!
Bollywood fans have already been discussing about the pointlessness of Bollywood awards on social media like Twitter and Facebook. It appears like everyone except award show organizers is aware of this growing criticism. These are Oscars, we have something similar in Bollywood. IIFA (Indian International Film Awards), which came directly into existence in 2000, is an international Bollywood award show where nominations & winners are selected by peers in the industry. The glossy award function is usually held at an international venue outside India. Nevertheless, they keep honouring minimal deserved winners. Moreover, they are not far behind in regards to hilarious categories.
In short, Bollywood award scene is really a big mess right now. This is often largely attributed to the fact that industry is disorganized to the core. They don’t have unity – they don’t have functional organizations for the actors and technicians. If they had, it could have been easier for them to conduct their very own award show modelled on Oscars. Because case, a trusted outside agency (an agency named PricewaterhouseCoopers gets the responsibility for tabulating Oscar votes) can handle the voting process to avoid politics and corruption. Also, it’d force the stars to go to the awards without seeking favours. This kind of move could clean up the system. But who is going to accomplish this? The leading actors are in loggerheads most of the time. They fight over everything and their cold wars and camp systems are infamous in Bollywood. So it could be a lot to expect them to do something about this mess.