The show was a sham. It no longer signifies the celebration of real art. I know India is celebrating its achievement and I tried real hard to be a part of it, I really did. I even took the pains to watch it live and I applauded every time Slumdog slammed one home but I confess it wasn’t wholehearted. I felt the awards were patronizing and catered to the current economic and political situation.
A. R. Rahman deserves the ‘Best Original Music Score’ award, no doubt about it. However, the best song could have gone to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Wrestler’, which for some apparent reason did not even get nominated. That is where I smelt something fishy. Usually there are five nominations for each category and again for some reason there were only three - two from Slumdog Millionaire(SM), one from Wall-E.
All the movies were either ‘Oscar-made’ or uplifting and SM’s use of gory or ‘poverty porn’ as some critics put it, leveraged its position to the general public.
Whatever happened to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight? It was by far one of the best movies to be made this year. If I had my way, I would have given it all the awards, except for Best Actor, which would have gone to Mickey Rourke for his brilliant performance in The Wrestler.
So you see the Academy has made the Oscars recession proof. It put on a good show which catered to public opinion and raked in a sizeable moolah from its TV ratings and to top it off, added a new audience (India). Now that is what I call show biz folks!
Business Lesson: Fuck ideals and standards; give the customer what he wants.
